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Copyright, 1895, 

BY 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY. 


All rights reserved. 


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• • 
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THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS, 
RAHWAY, N. J. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. A Town and a Household, . . . . i 

II. Kindly Neighbours, 20 

III. A Morning at Home, • 35 

IV. The Man Arrives, 49 

V. Tuesday Afternoon, 72 

VI. Love and Duty, 88 

VII. The First Step, 107 

VIII. The Primrose Path, 128 

IX. The World and the Cloister, . . .148 

X. A Question and a Recall, . . . 166 

XI. A Reckoning, 186 

XII. “ I Will Come Again, my Dear,” . . 206 

XIII. “Love Will Find the Way,” . . . 226 

XIV. Love is Enough, 246 

XV. “ Shall I, Wasting in Despair,” . . . 266 

XVI. Husband and Wife " . 286 


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THE WAY OF A MAID. 


CHAPTER 1. 

A TOWN AND A HOUSEHOLD. 

COOLEVARA is a typical Irish country town. 
A river flows in the midst of it, and the houses 
climb each side steeply. On one side are the 
hills — first a blue wall of rock, behind which lies 
an exquisite valley ; beyond that, range after 
range, Slieve-Columb overtopping them, with a 
ragged mantle of clouds about his shoulders, and 
his face hidden. The other side of the river, 
which is spanned by one long light bridge, the 
lanes and streets wind up, corkscrew fashion, to a 
high plateau, airy as a moorland. You can stand 
on the edge of it and look do^n into Coolevara 
chimney-pots : it would be an admirable point of 
vantage for the Devil on Two Sticks. The church 
spires seem to shoot up at your feet, and, looking 
down at the river, you will see it, most evenings, 


6 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


like a roadway of heaven — all broken gold and 
jewels, or a strange, rose-red river out of fairy- 
land. Coolevara scarcely ever pauses amid its 
leisurely occupations to look at the sunset. In 
Ireland you can have magnificent sunsets any 
night of the year without going out of your way 
to applaud them. 

Coolevara seems, to the visitor from more stir- 
ring climes, a dull place and a stagnant, but it has 
its own interests for those who live in it. The 
population is nearly altogether Catholic — sturdy, 
independent folk, they are, for they have, most 
of them, a black drop in their veins from one of 
Cromwell’s Ironsides. Those inconquerable war- 
riors settled down in various parts of the fertile 
Irish country, and, in days of peace, had to 
ground arms before the violet-eyed daughters of 
the mere Irish. In course of time they or their 
sons renegaded to the Scarlet Woman, and be- 
came as sturdy on her side as they had been on 
the other in their psalm-singing days. Admirable 
results these marriages have had. The men are 
great, brawny, square-shouldered giants, with a 
close black thatch on their big heads, and an in- 
finite humour about the lines of their cfose-shaven 
lips. They affect not the glibber,” which, in 


A TOW.V AND A HOUSEHOLD. 7 

Spenser’s time, was so pestilential a mark of the 
rebelly Irish, and go clean-shaven. They are 
darkly ruddy, and in anger turn darker, so that 
you see the black drop of the Cromwellian in 
them. They are hard-working, clever, thrifty 
people, as quick with a kiss as a blow, and so 
deeply attached to this country of hills and 
streams, this gentle-bosomed mother, that ’tis 
little they’ll thank you if you refer to that Crom- 
wellian drop, which is rather a sore subject in 
Coolevara. 

The cleavage between Protestants and Catholics 
in Coolevara, as elsewhere in Ireland, is incredibly 
great. There is no common ground for these 
adherents of the different religions to meet. The 
Protestants are not many : a handful of shop- 
keepers, Mr. Lacy the lawyer, Mr. Oliver, Lord 
Westsea’s agent and. himself a landowner, and 
the rector and his family. On Sundays the 
rector’s congregation is swelled by the country 
folk who drive in in their waggonettes and on 
their outside cars ; but the great cold building, 
with its glimmering funeral tablets set in the 
walls, is deserted beside the Catholic chapel, with 
its throngs of devout worshippers reaching out 
beyond the porch. Catholics in Ireland have not 


8 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


yet got SO far away from penal days as to speak - 
of their “ churches.” They are “ chapels,” for all 
the world as if they were bare Dissenting meet- 
ing-houses, and if you call them churches you are 
suspected of affectation and aping the English 
manner. 

On the whole, the Catholics in Coolevara have 
the best of it. For all the seeming sluggishness, 
the townspeople and the surrounding farmers 
manage to amuse themselves. There are frequent 
race-meetings, at which the good Coolevara folk 
turn out, with well-filled hampers in “ the well ” 
of their side-cars, whereon to picnic themselves 
and their friends. The men bet a little, the 
women gamble at sweepstakes. Every farmer 
pretty well about Coolevara has had, at one time 
or another, a little mare or colt in his stable for 
racing purposes, and the young fellows ride their 
own horses at the spring and autumn meetings. 
Then they visit much at each other’s houses, and 
have their games of Nap and spoil five for those 
not inclined for dancing. Weddings and christen- 
ings are the occasions of feasting; and as for 
courting, it is a general amusement and ever in 
season, though there are not always enough young 
men to go round. 


A TOWN AND A HOUSEHOLD, 9 

The Protestants look on at this jigging of 
their Catholic neighbours with some scandal. 
They live in the most decorous dulness, so far 
as the women-folk are concerned. They are 
intensely Low Church, and keep the Protestant 
Sabbath in its most rigorous form. The girls 
play the piano on week-days and do crewel-work ; 
for literature they have the dangerous delights of 
the Quiver and the Sunday at Home ; sometimes 
in summer they attend one or two frigid garden- 
parties. There is no parish work, such as there 
would be in England, no visiting of their poorer 
neighbours, for the poor about Coolevara are all 
Catholics. They fill their little money-boxes for 
the conversion of the Gold Coast, or some such 
unlikely mission, and are very blameless, very 
narrow, and — poor things ! — very dreary. As a 
rule, if they succeed in escaping to a freer atmos- 
phere, after a little preliminary fluttering, they 
become quite emancipated. They have even 
been known to return to Coolevara High Church 
women. 

Scarcely any of these remarks apply to the 
Olivers, who were the only Protestant gentry 
residing within the precincts of Coolevara. The 
Olivers had a big, square, old-fashioned house, 


lo the way of a maid. 

surrounded by gardens, and with an orchard at 
the back, at the edge of the town. The blue hill- 
wall rose behind it, and it looked across the 
smoke of the town to a less substantial, but still 
handsome, house that stood up barely opposite, 
its windows peering out to see over the edge of 
the plateau into the valley below. The latter 
house belonged to John Hurley, “a strong 
farmer ” and cattle dealer, with whom Mr. Oliver 
was on excellent terms. 

It was chiefly due to Arthur Oliver’s personality 
that his women-folk were little like the wives and 
daughters of the “ squireens ” who nearly made 
up the permanent Protestant gentry of Coolevara. 
Mr. Oliver was a man most kindly and benevo- 
lent, with a fund of shrewd common sense, a 
delighted, humourous eye for all the world’s af- 
fairs, and a heart overflowing with brotherhood 
for his fellow-men. He was a devout man, and 
his faith influenced every act of his life, while he 
spoke of it only in his most intimate moments, 
and it never made him sad-faced. Whether Mr. 
Scrope, the rector, would have thought his par- 
ishioner quite orthodox if he could have looked 
into his heart may be doubted. Mr. Oliver had 
been out in the world. He had known, and in a 


A TOWN AND A HOUSEHOLD. 


II 


sense understood, the doubts of other men with- 
out sharing them, and he had brought back from 
the world a wide tolerance and a ready sym- 
pathy. Mr. Scrope’s chilly and thin spiritual 
ministrations sufficed him. If he could have 
chosen he might have preferred a broader creed, 
but, as it was, his own person supplied all that 
was wanting and clothed the dry bones with 
living flesh. 

Mr. Oliver’s family consisted of his wife and 
two daughters. Mrs. Oliver was an English lady, 
but felt rather more warmly toward the land of 
her adoption than that of her birth. She was a 
very sweet, simple, kindly woman, and her hus- 
band adored her and laughed at her in most 
things she did. Her young daughters petted 
and patronised her, and feared nothing so much 
as to seriously displease her. She was easily 
shocked, in a little, conventional sense, by depar- 
tures from social rules or any straying outside 
boundaries ; but in a serious way, Mrs. Oliver’s 
charity and kindness covered wide spaces. To 
love and commiserate the sinner, while she loathed 
the sin, was Mrs. Oliver’s way, and she had per- 
petually under her wing a number of spiritually 
maimed and hurt creatures : drunkards who had 


12 


THE WA Y OF A MAID. 


broken their pledge, women whose folly had 
estranged their husbands, and the like. The 
blackest kind of sins were all but unknown in 
Coolevara. Mrs. Oliver steadied the feet of the 
penitent on the hard upward road as untiringly 
as she dispensed hot soup and blankets to the 
poor people and prescribed for their ailments. 
As for dumb creatures, she always had a little 
hospital of them in the big stable-yard at Cro- 
martin. Broken-legged chickens, wry-necked 
lambs, sick dogs, and many other ailing beasts 
had known the power of her potions and the dex- 
terity of her surgery. Mr. Oliver used to say 
that his wife’s office in the world was to help 
lame dogs over stiles, and no doubt he was right. 

The charity of Protestants toward their poor 
Catholic neighbours is often regarded askance in 
Ireland, where there is so much unhappy experi- 
ence of proselytism. But Mrs. Oliver’s kindness 
was never feared. In a freer atmosphere she 
would have followed the current of her own sweet- 
ness, and made friends with the priest whose flock 
she helped and the nuns of whom she heard from 
her pensioners. But the narrow atmosphere 
about her bound and constrained her. She was 
constitutionally timid, and it was only when there 


A TOWN AND A HOUSEHOLD. 13 

was a call for her help that her kindness over- 
flowed all bounds. Her timidity, which was in 
a way part of her sweetness, hedged round the 
lives of her young daughters with precaution. 
Their little plot of life was narrow, though it was 
sweet with love and all the virtues, and one of the 
girls at least often stood tip-toe gazing wistfully 
over the hedge, which, though it was made of 
rose-trees, was somewhat imprisoning. 

Mrs. Oliver, when these young daughters went 
momentarily beyond her ken, was as anxious as a 
hen when her ducklings take to the water. They 
had cousins in Dublin, to whom they sometimes 
went for an event — the Horse Show week, or the 
week of the tennis tournament, or for some un- 
usual gaiety. Mrs. Oliver would have refused 
these engagements for them if she could, but 
their father was on their side, and the head of the 
Dublin household was an eminent ecclesiastical 
dignitary, so that she did not feel justified in 
refusing. Further than Dublin they had not 
been, though their English cousin, Mrs. Vivian, 
had offered them a London season. But Mrs. 
Oliver’s distress at the suggestion was so evident 
that neither her daughters nor her husband could 
bear to press the matter. There was a curious 


14 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


tender understanding of, and sympathy among 
them for, her timidity. She never forgot her boy 
who had been drowned ten years ago in an effort 
to save a schoolfellow’s life. That had lined her 
soft hair with gray, and furrowed her delicate 
cheeks, and much weeping had made her eyes a 
little pale and so full of sadness. Those who 
were spared to her continually troubled her with 
apprehension. When they were out of sight she 
suffered exquisitely through her fears for them. 
So, out of their tender love and pity, they forbore 
from much absence from her, and were always 
careful to be punctual in return when they had 
to leave her, so as to save her from racking her 
tender heart. 

Of the two girls. May, the eldest, was most like 
her mother; Jessie took after her father very 
closely. May was as sweet as her name, but a 
little prim ; narrow toward what she could not 
understand, for her heart had not yet had the 
dews of sorrow to water it and the sun of years to 
ripen it, as her mother’s had. She was gentle, 
refined, loving, and most dutiful, but, like so many 
happy young creatures, a little dogmatic. Jessie, 
the young-er, had the fuller and richer nature. 
She often rather shocked her mother by a slang 


A TOWN AND A HOUSEHOLD. 15 

phrase or a too decided opinion, but it only 
needed Mrs. Oliver’s first gentle look of reproof 
to bring the young penitent with loving caresses 
that chased the cloud from her brow. Both girls 
were practically far in advance of their mother, 
and on the rare occasions when Mrs. Oliver ac- 
companied her daughters to any distance from 
Coolevara, they took care of her as they would of 
a child, and excited her secret amazement by 
their practical knowledge of the ways of railways 
and the procedure in city shops. Mrs. Oliver 
herself would never have cared to stray from the 
Coolevara streets and roadways. 

Both girls were brown — brown and graceful.” 
They were quite like each other, but the expres- 
sion was different. Jessie had a saucy vivacity 
that flashed at you from her bright eyes and 
white teeth ; her rows of chestnut curls had more 
of the sun than her sister’s ordered locks. They 
were exceedingly devoted to each other, though 
year by year their divergences of opinion grew 
wider. They were closest, perhaps, when Jessie, 
a brown and gay little child, had given to her 
sister the unquestioning love and admiration 
which a younger child often gives to an elder. 
Now, however, that their opinions differed, it did 


i6 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

not affect their feeling for each other, but, little 
by little, Jessie had emancipated herself from 
thinking exactly as her sister did in everything. 

The girls had been taught at home by a gover- 
ness, who did her work very efficiently. They 
were educated rather than accomplished, and they 
had all their lives been encouraged to have hob- 
bies. There was a big upstairs room which had 
been their kingdom in childhood, and what traces 
of departed hobbies that room kept ! It was yet 
in request on such occasions when their work was 
of a messy order, and not to be carried on in their 
own little bowers, gay with chintz and full of 
pretty things. There were located Jessie’s sculp- 
tor’s tools and wet clay; there, May’s photo- 
graphic fluids and chemicals. The girls were so 
full of interests that they had little time to be 
lonely. They read a good deal, but with restric- 
tions. Here Mr. Oliver upheld his wife, and 
when Jessie pleaded for more liberty, pulled one 
of her long curls and fondly sent her packing. 

The attitude of the Coolevara folk toward the 
Oliver family was distinctly friendly. It was sur- 
prising what an interest the future of the two 
girls was to the townsfolk. The Coolevara maids 
and matrons occasionally confessed to their dis- 


A TOIVN AND A HOUSEHOLD, 17 

appointment at the plain manner of dressing of 
Mr. Oliver’s daughters. Why, their tailor-made 
frocks and cool print blouses in summer couldn’t 
be named in the same day with Nora Halloran’s 
London dresses! Nora Halloran was an heiress, 
to be sure, and had no mother, and her old father 
loved to supply money for every whim of hers. 
She often floated up the aisle of Coolevara chapel 
on Sundays like a small bird of paradise, and the 
more gorgeous by contrast with her aunt Miss 
Carew’s sober grays and browns. Coolevara 
people admired Nora Halloran immensely, and 
agreed that she could wear things no one else 
could. They were fain to satisfy themselves with 
the Olivers’ plain attire by the judgment that the 
garments had style,” and the Coolevara people 
were not at all out in their judgment. 

As for Mr. Oliver, when he was seen coming 
down the street in his homespuns and leggings, 
or driving his high-stepping mare to fair or mar- 
ket, the greetings rained round him thick as hail- 
stones. He liked the love of his fellow-men, — 
good gentleman ! — and his rosy face beamed every 
side of him in response, while his jokes were fol- 
lowed by a trail of cheerful laughter. 

With his own class he was far from being so 


1 8 the way of a maid, 

popular. As Lord Westsea’s agent, he had acted 
with such discretion and humanity that, when 
every other estate in the country was under the 
Plan, the Westsea tenants were paying. Lord 
Westsea was a young gentleman wise enough to 
accept his agent’s advice about giving an abate- 
ment in time, and now he had occasion to rejoice 
at his wisdom. Philanthropic Englishmen were 
sent by the League leaders to see a beneficently 
managed estate in Lord Westsea’s. Fortunately 
Coolevara was, in great part, the Westsea estate, 
and so the general trouble passed it by. But the 
other land agents were bitter over those abate- 
ments of rent, and over the scandalous encourage- 
ment given to improving tenants on the Westsea 
estate. A man should stand with his class, they 
declared, or fall with his class. So Mr. Oliver was 
in bad odour with them, and save by the rector’s 
family, who were in duty bound, there was a bit- 
ter little , boycott of him and his. Mr. Oliver 
treated the matter outwardly as a huge joke, and 
was sufficiently powerful in Lord Westsea’s de- 
lighted approval of his action and its results to 
be able to wait till the time when the acrimony 
was forgotten. He sometimes affected not to 
know that it existed, and on a chance meeting 


A TOWN AND A HOUSEHOLD. 19 

with any of his brother agents, would hail them 
with the old jolly laugh and the joke, so irresist- 
ible to even a bad-tempered Irishman. In his 
inmost heart it vexed him, for he loved peace, 
but his philosophic bearing made the boycott far 
less severe than it would otherwise have been, 
for, as some good folk argued, what is the use of 
frowning at a man who looks back at you cheery 
as a brisk autumn morning? Perhaps only Mrs. 
Oliver guessed how the bad feeling fretted him 
inwardly. 


CHAPTER II. 


KINDLY NEIGHBOURS. 

In John Hurley’s house over the way John 
Hurley’s wife and two daughters were seated at 
breakfast. Mrs. Hurley was a mild Madonna- 
faced woman, and her daughters closely resem- 
bled her. Not so her boy, a large photograph of 
whom stood on the mantel-piece between two 
Worcester vases filled with autumn leaves. The 
girlish faces each side of the breakfast table 
had the common beauty of correct outlines and 
clear pale colours. Mary’s dark silken hair went 
smoothly off her forehead and was coiled at the 
back of her shapely head. Eily’s ringlets, droop- 
ing each side her oval face, and large eyes 
heightened the spiritual expression her face wore, 
an expression at once rapt and hidden. The 
woman at the head of the table looked from one 
face to the other. You might have seen in her 
gaze something of a half-grieved perplexity min- 
gling with the fond pride. Mrs. Hurley’s little 
girls were only lent to her, so to speak. They 
20 


KINDLY NEIGHBOURS. 


21 


were fresh from their convent school, and were 
already counting the days till they could flee 
away — Mary to the convent that had sheltered 
her girlhood, Eily to a convent of mercy in a dis- 
tant town. Mrs. Hurley was proud of their 
vocations, and yet had a wistful wonder over 
their other-worldliness. She would have liked a 
little daughter who would have been content to 
stay with her and the father, and, devout woman 
as was, she often felt these young creatures so 
transcendental as to be small comfort to her in 
a manner. 

She often said to herself that if Jim were at 
home she would have minded less. But Jim was 
an army surgeon in India, with some years of his 
time yet to expire, and the months were turning 
round to the time when she and John would be 
alone in this brown old house just as much as 
they were when he brought her home a bride to 
it, thirty years ago. 

Jim looked strong and reliable in his picture, 
and his mouth had a tender curve in it like his 
mother’s that promised well for his kindliness. 
He looked to be a big, square-shouldered young 
man, with an intellectual forehead and straight, 
fearless eyes. Jim had never given them a 


22 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


moment’s pang from the day he was able to 
walk, and he had given them much cause for 
pride and pleasure. ‘‘ The dearest and best boy 
in the world,” said the mother to her cronies, 
“ but sure, when all’s said and done, a boy’js not 
all out the same as a little girl. And Jim, please 
God, ’ll be marrying as soon as ever he gets 
home, and though I’m not grudging him the 
happiness, his mother won’t be the same thing 
to him.” 

John Hurley took matters more philosophi- 
cally. A man’s heart is less in the children, and 
the love of his youth was more to him than son 
and daughters, dear as they were. Having her 
he had no fear that the evening of his life would 
be lonely, and perhaps it cost him less of a pang 
to yield those stainless little daughters of his to 
the convent than it would be to give them to 
a husband, however good he was. 

The room was a typical one in a house of the 
kind. The Hurleys had lived here for more 
generations than they could count, had farmed 
their own land and owned many cattle. It was 
long since the room had been papered and 
painted. The red flock paper that had been 
very fine a quarter of a century ago was faded 


KINDLY NEIGHBOURS. 


23 


to a dead-leaf brown, with here and there a fleck 
of gold in it. There was a heavy carpet on the 
room and red moreen curtains to the windows. 
The furniture was covered with black horsehair, 
yet the room had an undefinable look of comfort 
and homeliness, which made it far from displeas- 
ing. The napery on the table was very fine, 
though darned in many places, and the tea-cups 
over which Mrs. Hurley presided were old china, 
brown and purple. On the wall were portraits of 
John Hurley’s father and mother, the lady stately 
in a tremendous frilled cap, the gentleman with 
ruffled shirt front and unpowdered hair, very 
handsome and dignified-looking. 

The Hurleys were simple people, and though 
always conscious of their descent from a good old 
stock, yet were with few pretentions. A hidden 
feeling of noblesse oblige perhaps helped to keep 
them unpretentious. Mrs. Hurley’s cronies, as 
a rule, were the wives of old-established shop- 
keepers in the town : they and Sylvia Carew, 
little Nora Halloran’s maiden aunt, sufficed the 
good woman for outside society. 

It had been considered a very ambitious thing, 
and somewhat unorthodox too, for the Hurleys 
to send their son to Trinity College. That was 


24 


THE WAY OF A MAW. 


John Hurley’s doing. Like most Irish farmers 
he was intensely ambitious, and when he discov- 
ered that his steady young son had brains as well 
as good sense, he determined that he should have 
the best advantages possible. He was far from 
being a wealthy man, but he didn’t grudge the 
cost of his son’s education, and it cost him less 
than he could have expected, seeing that in the 
second year of his college life Jim Hurley won 
a scholarship, which made the rest of his educa- 
tion practically free. 

He had a very distinguished course, and ended 
with a travelling scholarship which enabled him 
to study the latest foreign theories of medicine 
and surgery. After this, people were somewhat 
surprised that he chose to enter the army med- 
ical, and go to India with a regiment timed for 
foreign service. But the young man was in 
love with his profession, and was willing to serve 
the most arduous apprenticeship to it. Also 
he could not well afford to sit down and wait for 
a practice. But it may be doubted whether all 
those reasons would have induced him to go to 
India if he had not fallen in love with Nora Hal- 
loran before his last visit home preliminary to 
embarkation. 


KINDLY NEIGHBOURS. 


25 


He had known her as a small, imperious, much- 
petted child, but since those days he had seen 
nothing of her till she bloomed on his senses in all 
her seductive beauty in those last weeks of his 
holiday. Old Michael Halloran, her father, had 
sent her to a French convent, whence she only 
returned once a year for vacation, and her school- 
days lasted rather later than they usually do with 
Coolevara girls. She came home with a French 
daintiness, and perhaps a French coquetry, added 
to her natural beauty. Jim, a great parti among 
his young townswomen, but curiously insensible 
to their charms, succumbed to Nora Halloran at 
once. He became her accepted lover within a 
very short space — too short some wise people 
thought, but it had to be then or not at all, since 
he was so near departure. 

The little heiress was of a very uncommon 
beauty, with a small, dark, glowing face, lit up with 
the most splendid eyes. Usually those eyes 
were languidly veiled under lashes thick and soft 
as fur, but if their owner were excited and sud- 
denly flashed them wide open you were aware of 
a glow in their depths which told of possibilities 
of passion within. She was by way of being 
delicate, and had had her own will all her life. 


26 


THE WAY OF A MAID, 


Her father, and her mother’s sister, Sylvia Carew, 
who had mothered her in her forlorn babyhood, 
were as much at her beck and call as Mary, the 
queer, flat-footed, flat-faced servant, who had been 
Michael Halloran’s servant many years, and was 
one of the characters of the country-side. She 
was a little lady who walked in silk attire from 
the hour that she could walk alone, and the 
strait uniform of the French convent had been 
a sore trial to her. However, she made up for 
it when she came home by her multiplicity of 
gowns, mostly soft Indian colours and textures. 
She studied the ladies’ fashion papers assiduously, 
and as she could follow her fancies she devel- 
oped a style of dressing which enhanced her 
beauty as well as furnishing a perennial sensation 
to Coolevara. 

She had her way about her engagement as 
in everything else. She had a shrewd suspicion 
that her father yielded much against his will, 
but then old Michael was never effusive. 

She did not guess that the old man had an 
ancient grievance against Jim Hurley’s parents. 
Long ago when he was a young man of fifty or 
so, — for eligible bachelors are young at fifty in 
Coolevara, — having put by a very pretty heap of 


KINDLY NEIGHBOURS. 


27 


money, he looked around him for a woman to 
share it with him, and queen it over his house 
and dairy, his best parlours and jaunting-car. He 
soon made his choice. There was not a prettier 
girl in the country than Mary O’Riordan, with 
the snowy skin and deep blue eyes, the black 
silky ringlets and the carriage of a swan as it 
sails on the water. He never dreamt that the 
girl could object. She belonged to honest peo- 
ple with many daughters, and not a penny of 
dower for them, and he was the richest bach- 
elor in the county. He had been too busy 
money-grubbing to hear that Mary was already 
sweethearting with John Hurley, and perhaps if 
he had heard it he would have brushed the 
rumours aside contemptuously. Why, the Hur- 
leys were poor as church mice, and look what 
he had to offer ! 

He made his advances to Mary’s parents, and 
was received with effusion. The girl was brought 
in to be introduced to her future husband, but 
she stood with her long ringlets drooping about 
her bowed face, and Michael Halloran saw noth- 
ing of her expression. He had never had time 
to consider the question of love-making, and if it 
ever came natural to him, as it usually does to his 


28 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


countrymen, it had grown rusty through disuse. 
Michael Halloran was awkward and ashamed 
before the girl, and got away as soon as he 
could, vowing to have the marriage as soon as 
ever things could be fixed up. 

He was as good as his word, but quick as he 
was someone else was quicker. Within a few 
days of the marriage Mary and John Hurley 
made a runaway match of it, and in the hulla- 
baloo that followed it may be doubted that 
Michael Halloran and Mary’s parents had any- 
body’s sympathy but their own. 

Michael Halloran retired to his solitudes after 
that, and it was some years before he made 
another matrimonial attempt. He was close on 
sixty then, and looked as if he were rough- 
hewn out of gray granite. His second venture 
was more successful. Poor little Mary Carew had 
not the spirit to save herself from this gray 
bridegroom, or perhaps the brave lover to help 
her through with it. Her match was made for 
her with as sordid a spirit as if she were a young 
heifer or a mountain lamb. She went through 
it quickly, but it killed her. She lived for a 
year after her marriage, a gray little ghost of 
her gay and innocent former self. Then Nora 


KINDLY NEIGHBOURS. 


29 


was born, and her mother died, being too lan- 
guid, it seemed, to have the desire to live even 
for the sake of the little wailing baby. 

Michael Halloran had never forgiven Hugh all 
these years that old slight put upon him, so it was 
a bitter pill when he was offered Jim Hurley for 
a son-in-law. However, he, who was' as adamant 
to the rest of the world, was like wax in his 
daughter’s little hands, and he swallowed the dis- 
tasteful thing with scarcely a grimace. He was 
disappointed in more ways than one, for he held 
John Hurley’s son no match for his little girl. 
He wanted something more tangible than a 
college education and a reputed cleverness. It 
was part of the peasant primitiveness which be- 
longed to him that he thought contemptuously 
of these things. 

However, Nora had her way in this as in every- 
thing, and so it came to pass that she was to be 
daughter one day to gentle Mrs. Hurley, who be- 
gan to yearn over her son’s promised wife, very 
human as she was, the farther away her own 
young brides of Christ seemed from ordinary 
human needs and desires. 

It was surprising how busy those young per- 
sons were, how full the long day from their peni- 


30 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

tential getting up in the gray of the morning till 
their early retiring to their pallets. True, their 
business was less worldly than other-worldly, but 
it engrossed them all the same, and their ex- 
pressed ideal was to live as much as possible in 
the convent manner while they yet remained 
in their father’s house. 

So it was that John Hurley found his wife 
sitting alone behind the big china tea-pot, and 
gazing before her with a very dreamy look, when 
he came in from his fair. He kissed her fondly 
on her fair matronly brow, and it was surprising 
to see how, under his kiss, the little perplexed 
creases smoothed themselves out and disappeared. 
He took his stand on the hearth-rug, and straddled 
there comfortably, while his wife made a few 
preparations for his breakfast. When he was 
established before his bacon and eggs he began to 
give her the news of the fair. 

I got poor prices for the little bullocks, and 
yet, when I looked to buy, there was nothing I 
could fancy. Poor, pining, unlikely beasts that 
you’d never put a coat on.” 

“You’re home early, John.” 

“Yes; Oliver gave me a lift to the crossroads. 
Things seem always to go well with him, he’s so 


KINDLY NEIGHBOURS. 


31 


cheery. It keeps a man young to have a heart 
like his.” 

Mr. Oliver is a young man yet, John,” said 
his wife. “ Had he any news ? ” 

“ Divil a bit. News is as scarce as fine weather. 
Yes; ril tell you one thing. He was advising me 
to rebuild the house ; said he’d give me a reduc- 
tion on the rent if I did it to his satisfaction. 
He’s a powerful man for improvements.” 

‘*You wouldn’t think of it, John? ” 

No, my pet. ’Twill last our time. Let Jim 
do as he likes when we’re gone. Jim ’ll be a 
great man in London by that time, but I don’t 
know Jim if he’s the one to part with the old 
house that has sheltered so many Hurleys. He 
can make a country-house of it, and perhaps 
there ’ll be a son of his to take our place here 
some day.” 

Mrs. Hurley smiled wistfully. 

“ Where are the girshas ? ” asked her husband, 
looking round. 

“ In their own room. I believe they’re saying 
their matins.” 

“Little voteens!"' said the father fondly. {Vo- 
teens is the Irish colloquialism for a devotee.) 
“ Oliver was saying,” he went on, “ that the old- 


32 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


fashioned things that we put up with should be 
altered for the sake of the girls ; ‘ Beautiful crea- 
tures they are!' he said in his hearty way. He 
was amazed when I answered him : ‘ 'Deed, then, 
Mr. Oliver, 'twouldn’t be any use thinking of 
them at all, at all. My eldest is off to her con- 
vent at Christmas, her sister at Lady-day, and 
they’re counting the minutes till they can go.’ ” 

“ What did he say to that, John ? " 

“ Well, he seemed to think it something to be 
very sorry about. He said ’twas a big sacrifice 
for us to rear them for that.” 

He’s right, John,” said Mrs. Hurley sadly. 
“And, God forgive us! I often feel it hard to 
make it. Yet anyone could see He made them 
for Himself, and they couldn’t be happy unless 
they followed His call.” 

“ We’ll have to be everything to each other, 
Mary, as we were before they came. Do you 
remember the first evening we came home here, 
and sat by our own hearth, with the curtains 
pulled against all the world ? ” 

“ I’d remember it if I was dead,” said Mrs. 
Hurley with fervour. 

“ Oliver was talking about little Nora Halloran. 
It seems his daughters have scraped acquaintance 


KINDLY NEIGHBOURS. 


33 


with her, and are greatly taken with her. He told 
me Jim was in luck, and that his youngest, girl 
could talk of nothing but Nora’s beauty.” 

Mrs. Hurley looked fondly toward the portrait 
on the mantel-shelf. 

“There are more than Jim lucky,” she said, 
“ though ’tis his own mother says it.” 

“ Oliver has a pleasant way with him,” con- 
tinued her husband. “ He said that, by all ac- 
counts, our Jim was a boy for any parents to be 
proud of. I saw old Michael in the fair, too. 
He gave me a gruff good-morrow. I don’t think 
he’s over well pleased with his little girl’s match.’ 

“He’s soured, poor man,” said Mrs. Hurley 
gently. “ How does he take the Olivers’ notic- 
ing little Nora, I wonder?” 

“ Oh, he’ll be as proud as Punch. He has the 
ambition of the very divil. Why, if he could 
only see our Jim as other people see him, he’d be 
jumping out of his skin with delight over him. 
But he lives his lone, and is too obstinate to 
take the opinions of others if he heard them.” 

“ I don’t suppose it ’ll do Nora any harm,” said 
Mrs. Hurley a little anxiously. 

“ Sure, what harm would it be after doing 
her?” said John Hurley reassuringly. “ She has 


34 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


more sense in that pretty head of hers. And 
Oliver’s daughters are nice, homely little girls, by 
all accounts, and very simple in themselves.” 

“ None simpler,” assented Mrs. Hurley. No, 
I’m not afraid that Nora won’t find us good 
enough company afterward.” 


CHAPTER III. 


A MORNING AT HOME. 

A DAY or two later Mrs. Oliver and her daugh- 
ters were sitting by the morning-room fire. May 
was writing letters at a small table pulled close to 
her ; her sister was cutting the leaves of a book 
and gazing meditatively in the clear fire, so wel- 
come this brisk autumn morning. The mother 
was going through a heap of things to be mended 
in a basket beside her, and there was a desultory 
talk going on, in which the letter-writer joined 
from time to time. They were waiting for Mr. 
Oliver to come in before going to lunch. 

“ Mother, dear,” said Jessie, in the coaxing 
way that was habitual to her, I want that dear 
little Nora Halloran to come over here to lunch 
one day. You'd like her, mother, dear. It's a 
treat to look at her.'' 

Indeed, Jessie,” said her mother, “is that why 
you want her to come?” 

“No, you absurd darling! But I should like 
her to come here because I am so fond of her.” 


35 


36 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

Is it a genuine friendship ? ” 

Oh, yes, darling! You know I don’t take 
capricious fancies.” 

“ Well, then, she must come,” said Mrs. Oliver, 
placidly smiling. “ I am prepared to find her 
very nice indeed, since my girls like her.” 

“ I’m not so enthusiastic as Jessie,” May said, 
a little drily. 

“ May thinks Nora wears her frocks much too 
gay for Coolevara, and that she oughtn’t to crust 
her little brown paws with diamonds by daylight. 
Now, I think anything that adds to the gaiety of 
life in Coolevara is desirable.” 

“ Nora’s Liberty frocks certainly do that,” said 
May. “ I don’t deny that they become her, but 
quieter things would be more in place, and would 
enhance her beauty, I think.” 

“ We must give her a hint,” said Jessie good- 
temperedly. “ Shall I ask her on Saturday, 
dear ? ” 

‘‘Yes; Saturday will do very nicely,” assented 
Mrs. Oliver rather absently. She was holding 
one of her husband’s socks against the light to 
find out the places that required darning. 

The Olivers’ morning-room was bright and 
cheerful, of a rosy terra-cotta that looked warm 


A MORNING AT HOME. 


37 


no matter how chilly the skies. Three long win- 
dows were on one side, overlooking a steep lawn 
and the valley below. In the middle window a 
canary’s cage hung. The room was warmly car- 
peted and curtained, and was full of cosey low 
chairs. Drawn close to the human company were 
- two in which reposed a pampered and wheezy 
Pomeranian and a very alert Irish terrier, who 
was named Codger, and was Jessie’s precious 
chattel. It was one of Mrs. Oliver’s weaknesses 
that, admirable housekeeper as she was, she could 
never steel her heart to keep the dogs out of the 
chairs. “ I do think they enjoy a comfortable 
chair so much, poor things ! ” she pleaded, when 
her husband rallied her upon her weakness. 

There was a rap at the door, and a smart maid 
entered. 

“ Please, ma’am, Mrs. Lennon and Mary Murphy 
are waiting in the hall to see you.” 

Can I go, darling?” said May, looking up 
from her writing. 

“ No, my dear,” her mother replied, faintly 
smiling. “ It is generally rather a difficult case 
when Ellen and Mary come before me at the 
same time.” 

“ I’ll go and see that you get fair play,” said 


38 


THE WA Y OF A MAID. 


Jessie, jumping up, and throwing a fond young 
arm about her slender mother. 

In the hall two women sat, separated from each 
other by a few feet of tiles, each on the ex- 
treme edge of her chair, and had wisped about her 
chin a fold of the little shawl which covered her 
head and shoulders. One of the women looked 
very angry, and had an honest toil-worn face with 
a simple expression. She looked as if she were 
used to field work, and was tanned by the sun and 
wind. Even while she stood up as Mrs. Oliver 
entered the hall, she kept the steady glare of her 
honest resentment fixed on her enemy’s face. 

The second woman was little, peaked, and yel- 
low. She kept her mouth primmed and her eyes 
turned upward, as though appealing for justice 
to a higher tribunal. She looked uncommonly 
self-righteous, and a bad cast in one eye gave her 
look of appeal a wild intensity it else had lacked. 
Both women courtesied profoundly to Mrs. Oliver 
and her daughter. 

“ Now, what is all this new trouble?” asked the 
lady of Cromartin. “ I thought you two had 
promised me last week to be good friends.” 

Both opened their lips to speak, but Mrs. 
Oliver raised her hand. 


A MORNING A T HOME. 


39 


“ Not both at once, please. Do you speak 
first, Ellen. I believe you’re usually the ag- 
grieved party.” 

What is it all about, Mrs. Oliver, ma’am ? ” 
the woman began, her voice trembling. “ It’s 
just this: I wish, ma’am, you’d once for all bid 
Mary Murphy attind to her own sowl, an’ quit 
prayin’ for me.” 

praying for you^ Ellen!'" said Mrs. 
Oliver in amazement. “ But, surely, if Mary 
prays for you it is the greatest kindness she can 
do for you.” 

“ Kindness, moryah ! ” said Ellen, with extreme 
bitterness. ’Tis a kindness that’s not after lavin’ 
me an ounce av charackter. That’s the sort o’ 
kindness. There’s a mission goin’ on in the town, 
as maybe you’ve heard tell, ma’am, an’ Mary 
Murphy that’s prayin’ this many a year for my 
sowl to the dettrimint av her own, ’tis afther ask- 
ing the people’s prayers she is for the convarsion 
av me by way av the mission. Flops on her 
knees to Miss Mary Hurley in the street yester- 
day, an’ says she: ^ I’ve wearied Heaven this 
nine or ten years, Miss Mary, in supplication for 
the sowl av a great sinner, a poor owld reprobate, 
an’ if you’ll induce her. Miss Mary,’ she says, Ho 


40 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


kneel to the missioner, my prayers ’ll follow you 
night an’ morning.’ A great sinner ! an' an owld 
reprobate! Them was nice descriptions av an 
honest woman, Mrs. Oliver, ma’am.” 

She stopped for breath, and Mary Murphy 
took up the tale with an air of conscious virtue 
and a voice mincing and acidulated. 

“It’s this way, Mrs. Oliver: Mrs. Lennon is 
careless of her duty an’ foolish about spendin’ her 
few wages av a Saturday night on porther in the 
public house. An’ ’tis for her own sake I am 
prayin’ for her, an’ long as I’ve prayed without 
fruit, I haven’t given up hope, an’ still do my 
duty as long as the health’s in my body.” 

“Listen to her!” broke in Mrs. Lennon. 
“ Porther av a Saturday night ! Well, then, 
there’s them that gets porther without drinkin’ it 
honest in the sight av the neighbours. An’ 
there’s them wants prayin’ for more thin me that 
always earned my bread honest. An’ there’s 
them that puts on piety to humbug the poor in- 
nocent nuns an’ cadge things out av them.” 
Then, with a sudden fierceness that made Mrs. 
Oliver jump, she whisked about to her enemy : 
“An’ who gev you charge av my sowl, Mary 
Murphy?” she asked, with exceeding bitterness. 


A MORNING AT HOME. 


41 


Mary Murphy kept her sanctified upward gaze. 

“ There’s them,” she said, “ that makes allega- 
tions I scorn to answer. But as long as I live I’ll 
pray for sinners, an’ die happy, feelin’ my time 
was well spent.” 

“Well, Mary,” said Mrs. Oliver a little sharply, 
“ if you must pray for Ellen, I wish you’d do it 
quietly, and not talk so much about it. Remem- 
ber that that’s not the only way in which charity 
can be exercised. Now, go ! And as for you, 
Ellen, you’re really too foolish to be quarrelling 
over such a thing. Go down to the kitchen. I 
know cook has some chickens she wants you to 
pluck. Good-morning, Mary!” 

During this arbitration Mr. Oliver had passed 
through the hall, had lingered long enough to 
catch a word or two of the dispute, and with a 
comical look of comprehension at Jessie had 
passed on. He kept his feelings to himself till 
the morning-room door closed upon him ; then 
he broke into a series of delightful chuckles. 
May looked up from her letter-writing. 

“ Is it a new joke, dear, or the old joke that 
makes the world so incessantly delightful to you ? ” 

“ The latest trouble among your mother’s pen- 
sioners. Ellen Lennon accuses Mary Murphy of 


42 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


destroying her character by the simple process of 
praying publicly for her as a sinner. I don’t 
know how your mother will settle it, to be sure. 
I was very much inclined to quote to them the 
Scriptural injunction about praying for your 
enemies, but they were so engrossed in the mat- 
ter that they scarcely noticed me, and I had no 
excuse for lingering to hear it out.” 

Just then Mrs. Oliver and Jessie came in. 
Mr. Oliver went to meet his wife with a tender 
gallantry, and put her into the most comfortable 
chair. 

“ Poor Edith ! ” he said. What troubles you 
bring on yourself by all your goodness to people. 
Why don’t you send your troublesome cases to 
me? I’m a magistrate, and could adjudicate 
according to law.” 

Mother has cases, dear, where your legal 
knowledge wouldn’t be worth a thraneen^'' said 
Jessie. She keeps half Coolevara from ‘sum- 
monsing ’ the other half. As Mary used to say, 
it’s as good as a play to see them come, ‘ flitterin’ 
an’ screechin’ like a lot of turkey hens,’ with their 
complaints to mother.” 

“ Edith, my dear,” said her husband, with 
mock gravity, “you’ll ruin your husband and 


A MORNING A T HOME. 


43 


family with the indiscretion of your ways. 
What’s this I hear about your setting up half 
Father Phelan’s school children with white 
muslin frocks for their confirmation next 
week ? ” 

Mrs. Oliver blushed guiltily. “ They were 
very badly off for frocks, Arthur. I didn’t think 
it would be becoming to have the poor little 
children go in rags to what is a sacred ceremony 
to them.” 

“ All very fine, my dear, but wait till Scrope 
hears of it. There are enough evil allegations 
against your husband without your identifying 
yourself with Popery.” 

Mrs. Oliver looked at him with vague alarm, 
which made him lean down repentantly and kiss 
her cheek. 

“ Only one of my jokes, love. When will you 
get used to them and learn to sift my chaff from 
my wheat ?” 

But how did you know, Arthur? ” 

■ “ Old Kenrick told me. He thinks all your 
benefactions ought to go to good Protestants, 
like himself. He brought your enormity in 
during a long grumble, the gist of which was 
that he wanted a bit of a henhouse to accommo- 


44 


THE WAY OF A MAW. 


date his fowl. I paid him off by pretending not 
to understand that. I just said as I tipped up 
the horse, ‘ But surely you wouldn’t be wearing 
white muslin dresses at your time of life, Mr. 
Kennick ? ’ I could scarcely contain myself till 
I was out of the old chap’s hearing, and then 
I roared, as I remembered his face, till I alarmed 
the birds on the bushes.” 

“You seem to have all the funny adventures,” 
said Jessie. “ I believe they lie in wait for you.” 

“ Oh, they’re there for anybody to see. It all 
depends on the point of view. I was congratu- 
lating old Graves on his splendid crop of barley 
this morning, when he said to me, watching me 
out of his sly old eyes, ‘ Ah, but Mr. Oliver, sir, 
think of the money ’twill cost to get it in ! ’ 
There’s pessimism for you ! ” 

He stooped and lifted the Pomeranian out of 
his very comfortable chair and seated himself. 

“ Any letters for me this morning ? ” he asked. 

“ Yes, there’s a little bundle in your study. 
Wait, and I’ll fetch them,” said Jessie. 

She came back in a minute and laid them on 

♦ 

his knee. “There, dear,” she said, “I hope 
there’s not more than a moderate allowance of 
bills among them.” 


A MORNING AT HOME. 45 

“No threatening letters, . anyhow, Jess,” 
laughed her father. “ There’s not another agent 
in the country hasn’t Captain Moonlight among 
his correspondents.” 

He read through them for a few moments in 
silence. Then he said : 

“Can you take in St. Edmund, my dear? He 
offers to come for some shooting and the pleasure 
of our society, if we can have him.” 

There was a simultaneous exclamation of de- 
light from the two girls. 

“ Of course^' said Mrs. Oliver warmly. “ I am 
always glad to have St. Edmund, poor boy ! 
Shall I write to him ? ” 

“ By post time, if you will, my dear. He would 
like to cross over on Thursday, and be with us 
Friday afternoon.” 

“That will be jolly,” said Jessie. “We shall 
have quite a little luncheon party on Saturday 
with that dear St. Edmund and my Nora 
Halloran.” 

“ Is the little Halloran girl coming to see us, 
Jess,” asked Jier father. 

“Yes. Mother says I may ask her for Satur- 
day. I think St. Edmund will say that he hasn’t 
seen many London beauties to rival Nora.” 


46 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


‘‘ Take care of St. Edmund’s heart, my dear. 
You’d better warn him that your beauty is al- 
ready bespoken.” 

He would scarcely be attracted by a little 
country girl like Jessie’s friend,” said May a little 
coldly. 

“ I’m not so sure,” said Jessie. ‘‘ He might, 
after having run the gauntlet of so many London 
seasons, just succumb to a little country beauty.” 

“ Poor St. Edmund ! ” sighed Mrs. Oliver gently. 

Better leave him to take care of his own heart, 
children.” 

“ Now, why does mother always speak of St. 
Edmund with such commiseration?” said Jessie 
gaily. 

Mother’s way,” answered Mr. Oliver. “ Why, 
she pities even you and me, Jessie ! It’s a form 
her affection takes. But, now, what are you go- 
ing to'do to amuse your cousin when he comes ? 
The resources open to him among the families of 
the resident gentry about Coolevara on former 
visits are now closed, owing to the fact that your 
father is popularly supposed to be the author of 
the Plan, if not in league with Captain Moonlight 
himself.” 

“Great stupids !” said Jessie contemptuously. 


A MORNING AT HOME. 47 

Oh, St. Edmund won’t miss them ! He used 
only go to their dull houses to oblige us. It was 
a horrible strain on him, poor dear! Do you 
remember the tennis party at the Marshes’, where 
he and Mr. Scrope and little Teddy Turner were 
the only masculine beings? St. Edmund was 
expected to play a set with every woman on the 
ground. He wouldn’t have got done by now. 
But he didn’t keep up long. He just turned his 
back on all those expectant rows and rows of 
ladies, and came off to the kitchen-garden with 
me and ate cherries. He said I was worse than 
he was, because I said to Miss Eliza Marsh : 
^ What a delightful old-fashioned garden you 
have. Miss Marsh! What an ideal garden for 
courting ! ’ ” 

Jessie ! ” said Mrs. Oliver, with emphasis. 

“ Yes, darling,” said the unabashed culprit. 
“ But what made the speech so mat apropos was 
the painful absence of the male element, and all 
those rows of spinsters who heard me with ‘ a 
stony British stare.’ ” 

“ Upon my word, Jess,” said her father, I’m 
not sure that your letting your tongue run away 
with you is not as responsible for my boycotting 
as your mother’s papistical sympathies.” 


48 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


There now, mother dear, we’re fellow-sinners.” 

“And here’s Jess, now,” said Mr. Oliver, with 
comical despair, “ not content with estranging the 
blue blood of this county, she takes to her heart 
one of the rebelly Irish, a Papist as well, and one 
whom the Misses Marsh or Mrs. Leigh Moore 
and her daughters would be far from considering 
their social equal. I wonder you’re not concerned 
about it, Edith.” 

“ I’m satisfied that my girl’s friend must be a 
lady,” replied Mrs. Oliver calmly, “else my girl 
would not wish to make a friend of her.” 

“ She couldn’t help being a lady, could she, 
mother, dear, with that sweet, gentle aunt of 
hers, who brought her up? ” said Jessie. 

“ Miss Carew looks a lady, certainly,” assented 
her mother. “And I hear nothing of her that is 
not good and gentle.” 

“ There is the luncheon bell,” broke in Mr. 
Oliver. “Come, my dears, you must even finish 
the conversation at the table. I can only say 
that there’s little use in my trying to keep my 
daughters in check when their mother gives them 
their own way in everything.” 

“ Mother’s way is to spoil the whole of us, 
father included,” quoth his youngest daughter. 


CHAPTER IV. 


THE MAN ARRIVES. 

Nora was quite conscious that in Coolevara it 
would be considered social promotion for her to 
go visiting at Crcfmartin, yet she had a delicate 
and dainty conceit of herself which kept her from 
acknowledging that it was true, even to herself. 
All the same, she considered her wardrobe with 
more than usual care on Saturday morning, de- 
veloping a fastidiousness which in her heart 
amazed her. She ended by selecting her quietest 
out-door attire. Perhaps her occasional long, 
musing gaze over the October woodlands, where 
the hazel nuts were hanging heavy in the boughs, 
decided her. “ My love in her attire doth show 
her wit,” and Nora’s final choice was a frock of 
nut-brown cloth trimmed with fur, and a little 
hat of the same fur which sat softly on her shim- 
mering curls. In the hat there was a touch of 
scarlet which she repeated in the gown by pin- 
ning a bunch of autumn leaves in the belt. She 
drew off her rings, with half a sigh, all except 


49 


50 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

one, and dropped them on her dressing-table. 
Then she pulled on her brown su^de gloves, and, 
leaning forward, regarded herself steadily in the 
glass. Yes, she said to herself, she had chosen 
wisely. 

The little face that looked back at her was 
glowing as a rose. Her golden-brown hair and 
eyes showed more sweetly for the demureness of 
her attire. Under the fur, round her smooth 
childish neck, she had a string of those Venetian 
beads, brown with gold lights in them, which 
repeated happily the colour of her hair and eyes. 
They became her as they would become a child. 
Her red lips were parted over little teeth white 
as the kernel of a nut. She smiled at herself out 
of innocent satisfaction with her beauty. 

She went downstairs leisurely and into the 
parlour, where her aunt was sitting at her house- 
hold accounts. Miss Carew looked up, half 
absently. “ Are you going, darling ? ” she said. 
She was a very sweet-looking maiden lady, with 
still an indefinable air of youth about her. Her 
hair had threads of silver through its silky fair- 
ness, and her delicate skin was faded as yester- 
day's rose, and full of fine little lines. But she 
kept her youthful figure, and the smile, appealing 


THE MAN ARRIVES. 


51 


and tender, was not to be associated with age. 
Truth to tell, it would have been a severe shock 
to Sylvia Carew if she had heard herself referred 
to as an old woman, though in the solitude of 
her chamber she was wont to tell herself that she 
was old, with a persistence that showed how hard 
it was for her to learn the lesson. 

She had had what the poor people called an 
anciont owld romance,” and the fragrance hung 
about her with a faint ghostly scent as of dead 
rose leaves. Her contemporaries had married, 
grown buxom, reared their families, and had 
realised or not realised their youthful dreams, 
according as fate had dealt kindly or unkindly 
by them. In her heart Sylvia Carew thought 
her unfinished romance sweeter than the tangible 
husbands and children. Her thought was the 
thought in Keats’ ode : 

“ She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, 
Forever wilt thou love and she be fair.” 

There in her past the golden city of her hopes 
hung, arrested in the enchanted air, a mirage 
faint and tender, but more real than such things 
often are when one has seized and possessed 
them. 


52 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


She looked at her niece with that faint smile, 
pathetic as winter sunshine. 

“ Well, Aunt ’ Sylvia,’’ said that little person 
a trifle impatiently, “ how do you like me ? ” 

“Like you, darling? ” echoed a soft and low 
voice. “ I always like you. No one could look 
prettier and sweeter.” 

“ Ah, but you’d say the same, no matter what 
I wore. You don’t exercise a proper motherly 
supervision over my wardrobe, and you don’t see 
that I dressed myself very quietly to-day because 
I know Mrs. Oliver likes girls to go in sober grays 
and browns. Ah, here comes Mary. She’ll be 
more observant.” 

Mary came shambling into the room, a big, 
heavily-built girl, with her broad face grinning 
under her housemaid’s cap. She had been Mrs. 
Oliver’s second housemaid before coming as 
general servant to the House by the Mill, and so 
she was specially interested in this outing of her 
young mistress. 

“Well, Miss Nora,” she said, beaming, “you 
look lovely, though I never saw you dressed so 
plain. But that’s how quality does, isn’t it, 
miss ? ” 

“Yes, Mary,” said Nora, “and I’m very glad 


THE MAN ARRIVES. 


53 


to have the hall-mark of your approval. That’s 
exactly what I aimed at, to do as quality does.” 

Mary was deeply attached to her young mis- 
tress, and was unfailingly good-tempered and 
sympathetic to every word of the delicate and 
rather spoilt little heiress. From the young 
mother who died so sadly Nora had inherited 
nerves and a vitality easily depressed. During 
the period when she suffered under these things, 
Mary’s queer philosophy and the grim humour 
with which she regarded her fellow-creatures 
often cheered the girl when all other comfort had 
failed. Nora used to say, indeed, that she would 
not be without Mary in the house for anything. 
One could well believe, looking at the infinite 
humour of her wide mouth and little twinkling 
eyes, that she was a character, and Mary’s speech 
was indeed better worth listening to than that of 
many accomplished and learned persons. 

Nora was to have yet another testimony to 
the becomingness of her attire and the brightness 
of her beauty. As she went down the steps she 
met her father coming up. He went back a step 
or two and waited for her on the sweep of gravel 
in front of the^ house, smiling a difficult smile at 
her as she came down to him, pretty and stately. 


54 


THE WA Y OF A MAID. 


Michael Halloran was not given to smiling, and, 
therefore, the awkward light which broke over his 
face at sight of his darling was touching, if any- 
one had been there to notice it. He was a beetle- 
browed, shaggy, fierce-looking old man, with a 
very bitter twist to the end of his tongue, said 
Coolevara people. He looked tremendously 
strong, despite his age, with his great head sunk 
between huge shoulders. He still supervised all 
his concerns actively, and though people often 
advised him to get out of the land, Michael 
Halloran would shake his head : Thank ye, 
kindly, but I hope God ’ll let me die in harness.” 
And, indeed, it was easier to believe that he 
would drop down in his place some day, with his 
great bulk stricken as an oak is stricken by light- 
ning, than to imagine him resting quietly in the 
chimney-corner in the evening of his years. He 
had the name of being a very hard man, but his 
tenderness to his little daughter, since she could 
remember, had been unvarying, and she in return 
fairly worshipped him, and held him in the right 
about everything. 

She laughed half-coquettishly down at him, 
where he stood with that adoring emile. “ Am I 
pretty, dad ?” she asked. 


THE MAN ARRIVES. 


55 


“ Pretty, my jewel !” he replied ; as pretty as 
the prettiest squirrel in Dromin woods.” 

“ Shall L please the Olivers, do you think ?” 

“ Tis they would be hard to please, if you 
didn’t.” 

She ran down the steps lightly and kissed him 
on his dusty cheek. Then she went away, twirl- 
ing her little cane down the hilly road through 
the pines, while the old man looked after her 
with pride and delight. 

At the end of the bit of straight avenue she 
waved her hand back to him. He still stood at 
the door-step of the house behind him, which 
looked comfortable and ancient, but dwarfed by all 
the disused mill-buildings beyond, from which it 
had its name. The mill-buildings were derelict 
and half in ruins. In the lower floor of one range 
Michael Halloran had stalled his cattle. The 
upper floors of the least ruinous were his corn 
lofts and granaries. But beyond these were 
ranges of the gaunt buildings, upon the crumbling 
floors of which none dare set foot. They were 
given over to rats and bats, that made strange 
noises there of nights. The mill yards were 
shiny with vegetation and dampness, and one had 
to be careful there not to stumble upon the 


THE IVAY OF A MAID. 


56 

rotting wood that once covered some deep well. 
Over all stood up the monstrous chimney, gaunt 
and useless. 

The mill buildings had always been a kind of 
nightmare to Nora. How often had she looked 
out at them from her little room at night, seeing 
them stark against the sky, and shuddered. So, 
when she was at school in her French convent, had 
she trembled to see, from the dormitory window 
by her bed, the tablet of white marble in the 
cemetery on which the names of the dead nuns 
were engraved, gleaming in the moonlight. It 
would have been a big and expensive job to pull 
down the buildings and clear off the debris, or so 
practical a man as Michael Halloran would long 
ago have cleared the ground of them. So there 
they stood till Time himself should level them, and 
the storms of winters to come should bring them 
down like a house of cards. 

Nora swung blithely on the way to Cromartin, 
and arrived the prettier for the exercise and ex- 
citement, which set her cheeks in a glow. Jessie 
met her in the hall, and took charge of her, 
carrying her off upstairs to her own room to 
remove her hat, for she was to spend a good long 
part of the day at the Olivers’. When they 


THE MAN ARRIVES. 


57 


reached that pretty sanctum, with its rosy chintz 
hangings and green furniture, Jessie stood and 
inspected her friend, finishing up with an em- 
phatic little nod of approval. “You, darling,” 
she said, “ you look just exactly as I wanted 
you to ! ” 

Nora brushed out her little mop head at the 
glass, while Jessie fussed about much excited at 
this first visit of her friend. 

“ril tell you, Noreen, why I wanted to have you 
looking even sweeter than usual, if that were 
possible. It’s not altogether for mother, though 
I want mother to be taken with you, but we have 
a dear, delightful cousin here, who is devoted to 
beauty, and is most fastidious, I am sure, though 
he never said so, and I did want to show him 
what we could do in Coolevara.” 

Nora smiled a roguish little smile. 

“ Who is this very fine gentleman? ” 

“ Oh, you needn’t laugh ! He’s no mere dandy, 
though what I said might seem to suggest it. 
He’s a dear, dear fellow, and he hasn’t had much 
happiness in his life, which makes us fonder of 
him. When he was quite a boy he fell in love 

with a married lady, a Mrs. Illingworth ” 

She paused, for Nora looked a little horrified. 


58 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


“ Don’t be scandalised, you goose! His was a 
boy’s romantic devotion, and she seems to have 
accepted it, poor thing ! rather selfishly, I think, 
because she was dying and had a brute of a hus- 
band. Everyone knows that it was an ideal 
thing. Only poor St. Edmund has never seemed 
to care for any woman since she died, and I don’t 
know whether he’s going to remain a bachelor or 
not, but what a pity that would be, for he has 
a beautiful house and place all going to waste, 
and I am sure he would make an ideal hus- 
band. He is so thoughtful and kind to women 
always.” 

Nora looked very thoughtful over this recital. 
It was just the kind of story to touch her suscep- 
tible heart. She went downstairs with Jessie 
very eager to see the hero of this romance. 

She was led up first to Mrs. Oliver in her 
low chair. That dear woman, with one of her 
motherly impulses, drew down Nora’s face and 
kissed it warmly. Nora felt, with a sudden rush 
of ardour, that she could die for Mrs. Oliver if 
need be. 

She looked shyly through her long lashes at 
Mr. Oliver and the gentleman who was intro- 
duced as Mr. Hilliard, He looked exactly like 


THE MAN A EE/ FES. 


59 


his story, she thought, and her quiet glances at 
his face, during the luncheon hour following, con- 
firmed her in this impression. 

Hilliard was a tall, loosely built man, some- 
where in the thirties. He had a colourless, refined 
face, with a look of breeding about it. A close 
observer would have seen possibilities of passion 
in his wide nostrils, but his normal expression was 
rather a languid one. He had been an athlete in 
his college days, but had given that up with many 
other tastes and pursuits. He moved with his 
day, and knew all that was transpiring, but it was 
with a lax interest he contemplated human affairs 
in general. The ambitions of his boyhood had 
flickered out with the life of the woman he had so 
unhappily loved. 

At Cromartin his spirit seemed always to be 
braced and strengthened. With those cousins 
he gradually lost his bored manner and his lack 
of interest. The atmosphere was so fresh and 
wholesome, as purifying as the mountain air. 
He was deeply attached to his cousin Arthur. 
Their very dissimilarities made him love him 
better. Mr. Oliver’s wonderful religious faith in 
a day of calamity, the day when his own son 
was borne to his grave, had deeply moved the 


6o 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


younger man, who had forgotten how to pray 
since Helen Illingworth died. 

He loved Mrs. Oliver, too, and her tender 
kindness to him. She lectured and petted him as 
his own mother might have done. At Cromar- 
tin, more than any other place, he had seemed to 
find the atmosphere of home. He had said to 
himself that he would be a homeless man forever. 
The one woman, who ought to have been his wife 
and the mother of his children, was dead, and had 
never been his. He had not forgotten to bleed 
inwardly at the sound of her name, or his pulses 
to stab him at the turn of a head, or the expres- 
sion of a face, that reminded him suddenly of 
her. She had been a good woman, and had left 
him an unstained memory of her to keep, yet 
there were times when that seemed cold comfort, 
and the natural man in him cried out bitterly for 
the warmth of possession that had never been 
his. The women of his set said he was too sel- 
fish to marry. He was wealthy enough to choose 
freely if he cared, but he never seemed to care. 
No one, not even his sister, guessed at the death 
in life that had come upon a heart once hot and 
generous, and a spirit once proud and strong. 

St. Edmund s attachment to Mr. Oliver was 


THE MAN ARRIVES, 


6i 


one of the most wholesome things about him- 
He enjoyed rallying him on his friendliness with 
the tenants and his corresponding unpopularity 
with the other agents. 

“You should come to England, Arthur,” he 
was saying now. “ Your abilities are thrown away 
in this unfortunate country. I hear your men 
are paying, when ‘No Rent!’ is the motto on 
every other estate in the country.” 

“ Aye,” said Mr. Oliver cheerfully, “ and meet 
with the same fate as Staunton met with from old 
Scropeshire. You know Staunton is the very 
haughtiest of Irish land agents. Well, someone 
recpmmended him to Scropeshire when the Kil- 
lowen estate tumbled in to him ; and he got the 
agency. We went over after a time to suggest 
various things, perhaps putting on the screw 
among them, for Staunton ’s always in hot 
water. Lord Scropeshire had no idea at all of 
the standing of Irish land agents — thought they 
were just like his own farm bailiff. He inter- 
viewed Staunton rather shortly in his library, and 
then closed the conference with : “ Well, Mr. 
Staunton, you’ll find your lunch in the servants’ 
hall, and a pleasant journey to you.” Staunton 
thought the man had gone stark, staring mad. 


62 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


and was so dumfounded that he allowed the big 
footman to bow him out without a word. How- 
ever, he recovered himself so far as to wave the 
fellow away when he would have led him to down- 
stairs regions. He could scarcely contain himself 
with rage till he got to the next market town, 
where he wrote a brief note to Scropeshire, resign- 
ing the agency. His lordship doesn’t know to 
this day what possessed the man, but has put it 
down as another example of Irish irresponsibility. 
The estates are managed now by a firm of lawyers 
in Ardmore ; but if you want to take a rise out of 
Staunton, you’ve only to whisper the name of 
Scropeshire.” 

St. Edmund laughed at the story, and then 
asked : “ Is Mr. Staunton one of your pro- 

English ones ? ” 

Now, that is your English mistake,” answered 
Mrs. Oliver. “ Staunton is to some extent anti- 
Irish, but that doesn’t involve being pro-Eng- 
lish.” 

“ It’s only a few half-bred ones up in Dublin 
who are pro-English,” said Jessie. 

Mrs. Oliver dropped her knife and fork, and 
looked horrified at Jessie, who blushed and 
laughed apologetically. “ Dear mother ! ” she 


THE MAN ARRIVES. 63 

said, “ I’m so sorry. But you’ve no idea how my 
tongue runs away with me.” 

“ Jessie states a fact in rather strong language,” 
, said her father. “You find really good people 
who are anti-Irish to the extent of being anti- 
national. The pro-English are quite another 
sort, and do not flourish down here. I’m not 
sure that some of our Protestant gentry are not 
more opposed to what is called West-Britonism 
than any Fenian of them all. Their idea is 
equality with England, not subservience to her, 
and, by Jove ! some of your clever English fellows 
would be amazed at the haughty mental attitude 
toward you of the Irish class whom you regard 
as the best friends of your domination. So they 
are, but it’s from distrust of their Roman Catholic 
fellow-countrymen. If they could get over that 
you’d have something to do to hold your own in 
this island.” 

“ But you don’t distrust the Catholics, dear 
Arthur,” said his wife, “ and yet you’re not 
disaffected.” 

“Aint I, by Jove?” said Mr. Oliver. “You’d 
better ask Staunton and Lee and Wilson. I’m 
not sure but they’d put me down as a ranker 
recreant than Parnell himself. He, now, is an 


64 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


example of an Irish Protestant who has broken 
free from the fear of the Catholics.” 

“ Mr. Parnell has an American mother,” 
said May. 

'‘And you, father,” said Jessie, “are sprung 
of a good Evangelical stock, and are only 
broader-minded than your forbears because you 
have some extraordinary strain of benevolence 
in you that has been fostered by mother, and 
makes the whole world men and brothers 
to you.” 

“ But what does Miss Halloran say ? ” said 
Mr. Oliver, turning to his silent right-hand 
neighbour. “ She, no doubt, could give us some 
new views on the subject.” 

Nora blushed, but lifted up her big eyes to 
her host. “ I have often heard my father and 
Mr. Hurley say that there are faults on both 
sides, usually, but that it would be hard for ten- 
ants to be discontented, if they were always so 
justly treated as those are who are under Mr. 
Oliver.” 

“ By Jove,” said Hilliard to himself, “ the little 
woman has aplomb ! ” 

Mrs. Oliver looked gratefully at Nora, and Mr. 
Oliver laughed, well-pleased. 


THE MAN ARRIVES. 


65 


“ Never mind, father, dear,” said Jessie, “if the 
other land agents think you lack esprit de corps 
because you happen to be a man of peace. Lord 
Westsea is well satisfied with you, for he’s the 
only landlord in this county that’s getting a 
penny of rent. They say even Parnell’s tenants 
are not paying.” 

“ 1 shouldn’t be surprised,” said Mr. Oliver, 
“ and though I go a long way with the tenants, 
I don’t go all his way. I think he’s making a 
mistake of building up his fabric of patriotism 
on a foundation of self-interest. I fear one of 
these days he’ll find to his grief that he’s been 
creating a nation of pocket-patriots.” 

“ Well, anyhow, Arthur,” said St. Edmund, 
“ I’d rather have the agents against me than the 
tenants. The former don’t go in for potting 
their man, do they ? ” 

“ Oh, well, the tenants don^t always do it in 
malice. Did I ever tell you about George Blake 
Browne ? ” 

“ Not that I remember ; but anyhow, your 
stories bear repetition.” 

“ Well,” said Mr. Oliver, with one of his most 
comical looks, “ George Blake Browne is one 
of the decentest fellows and poorest landlords 


66 the wa y of a maid. 

in all Ireland. He has a lot of wild mountain 
land, not worth a thraneen of rent, and the 
tenants are the wildest lot of scarecrows from 
here to Bloody Foreland. Well, George lived 
along as best he could, through the hard times, 
and forbore to press for the rent. He didn’t need 
much, poor man, only enough to keep him in 
whiskey and tobacco. He could never afford 
to get married. But bye-and-bye, it came that 
George hadn’t a copper at all, and he called the 
tenants together. ‘ Oh, begorra, boys,’ said he, 
^ I’m stone-broke, and you’ll have to pay or go. 
If you can’t scrape together at least half a 
year’s rent out of the twelve or fourteen you 
owe me. I’ll have to send you notices to quit. 
I’ll be heartbroken to do it, but I must.’ The 
boys went out rather downcast. They got to- 
gether and discussed the matter, and got heated 
over it, and at last someone suggested that a 
shot would quiet him. They hadn’t a bit of 
malice against him, not a bit, but shooting was 
going on all around them, and they didn’t like 
his talk of paying the rent. There was some 
question of drawing lots for whoever was to fire 
the shot, but they funked it, rather, and so it 
was decided at last they should all do the job 


THE MAN ARRIVES. 


67 


in a body; and Black Nick Brophy, the stoutest 
man of the lot, was to fire the shot. I believe 
that same required a stout heart, for the old 
blunderbuss they had unearthed was an inch 
thick in rust, and was as likely to blow the lot 
of them to pieces, as anything else. They 
waited for George one dark December night, 
when they knew he was spending the evening 
in Iniscarra. It was easy to stalk poor 
George indeed, for he spent six nights out of 
seven playing spoil five with the lawyer, the 
doctor, and a couple of other good fellows 
in Iniscarra, and the seventh night they 
spent with him. But it happened this night 
there was some poteen introduced at the party 
that had never seen the Queen’s head, and 
George felt more comfortable where he was, 
than driving the road home, and so he took 
a bed on the hearth-rug. The boys waited 
till they were numb, let alone that Black Nick 
barred all conversation, and had even made them 
teetotalers till the deed was done. So the night 
wore away, and the conspirators grew sad. 
At last one said fearfully: ‘My mind mis- 
gives me, boys, but somthin’s happened the 
poor master.’ Nick dropped the musket, and 


68 


THE WA y OF A MAID. 


cried, ^ Wirra, God forgive ye, ye omadhawn ! 
what ’ud happen the cr’atur?’ ‘I’m mis- 
doubtin’ the Sally mare he drives,’ said one, who 
happened to be George’s henchman, and was in 
the thing just for the fun of it; ‘she’s a scary 
thing, an’ as often as not the master’s too full 
to be drivin’ the likes of her.’ ‘ Well, boys,’ 
said Black Nick, ‘ God forbid anything ’ud 
happen the poor master, but before we go home, 
it ’ud be as well we’d travel back as far as Inis- 
carra Bridge to see if any harm has befallen 
him, an’ if he’s needin’ help.’ And travel they 
did. And there were no more attempts made 
on George Burke Blake.” 

“You’re an extraordinary people,” said Hil- 
liard, when the laughter had subsided. “You 
make a joke of things we English people would 
count very serious. Don’t you think so, Mrs. 
Oliver?” he said, addressing that lady, who had 
looked vaguely puzzled over her husband’s story. 

“ Oh, Edith doesn’t understand us always, any 
more than yourself. She’s an Englishwoman to 
the backbone. We Celts often laugh at things 
we take very much to heart, and half the time 
we laugh because we won’t cry. Our laughter 
doesn’t always mean what it seems to you.” 


THE MAN ARRIVES. 


69 


“ Someone said, papa,” remarked Jessie, “ that 
a thing must be really serious to you when you 
can afford to laugh at it. It isn’t quite the same 
thing as you mean, but I think the Irish Roman 
Catholics are quite a proof of the truth of that 
saying. They jest about the things of their 
religion in a way that would seem quite profane 
to us, and they never would think of doing it if 
they weren’t conscious of their own faith and 
real reverence behind.” 

“I see you still cling to Bridget and Mary 
Jane, Mrs. Oliver,” said Hilliard. “ I wonder Mr. 
Scrope doesn’t regard it as a scandal that your 
servants should be all Catholics.” 

“ Oh, Scrope has a Catholic cook, for the mat- 
ter of that,” said Mr. Oliver; “and if he wanted 
to grumble at my wife, he’d have plenty of cause 
besides that. What do you think of her finding 
confirmation frocks and first communion frocks 
for half the children in Coolevara? Then she 
has embroiled me past praying for with Wilson. 
She has some wretched tenants out on the bog 
whom he’d like to see safe inside the walls of 
Coolevara Prison. They’re living under a few 
wet scraws — God help them ! — and my wife here 
is keeping them alive with soup and blankets and 


70 THE WA V OF A MAID, 

every eatable scrap she can lay hands on. Sure, 
it’s no wonder I’m a marked man ! ” 

Mrs. Oliver gazed at her husband in some dis- 
tress. He stood up and went to her, as a very 
young husband might, and kissed her soft 
matronly cheek. There, there, my dear,” he 
said, “ it was only a jest. Edith never knows 
when I’m serious and when I’m not, Hilliard.” 

“ Papa, dear,” said Jessie, did you hear about 
Mary Holahan? She prayed the other day that 
the heavens might be our bed. ' How do you 
make that agree, Mary,’ said I, ‘ with our being 
Protestants ? ’ ‘ Never mind, Miss Jessie, acushla,’ 
she said ; ‘ ye’ll all slip in on the score of your 
invincible ignorance.’ ” 

Nora blushed somewhat for this co-religionist 
of hers, but was relieved to find that they all took 
it as an excellent jest. 

“ By the way. Miss Halloran,” said Mr. Oliver, 
turning to her, I want to show this Englishman 
an Irish model farm. Do you think we would 
find your father at home if we called on Tuesday 
or Wednesday, and that he would be willing to 
take us over his land?” 

“ I am sure he would be delighted,” said Nora. 
‘‘Shall I say Tuesday?” 


THE MAN ARRIVES. 


71 


“Yes, please; and if the day doesn’t suit him, 
we can select another. I think your scientific 
farmers in Norfolk and Lincolnshire are great 
humbugs, Hilliard. I’ve seen slipshod farming 
and great pieces of waste on those model farms, 
so-called, that would horrify Mr. Halloran.” 

When Nora went home and told her father 
that Mr. Oliver was bringing his cousin on the 
Tuesday, he was well pleased. She was enthusi- 
astic about the kindness of the Olivers and the 
delightful visit she had made. Her father listened 
to her accounts of it with almost childish interest. 
She chattered a great deal about it to the Hur- 
leys, too, when she walked home with them after 
mass. About the English cousin she said little. 
She felt herself rather afraid of his cleverness and 
his possible amusement at her rusticity, but she 
had not misread the admiration in his eyes, and 
she was flattered and pleased by it. She said 
nothing at all about the impending visit on Tues- 
day to the Hurleys. 


CHAPTER V. 


TUESDAY AFTERNOON. 

It was Tuesday afternoon, and Mr. Oliver 
and the Englishman were driving behind a spank- 
ing mare round the sweep of hill beyond which 
lay the House by the Mill. The day was coldly 
bright, with a misty sun glittering in a sky like 
a polished silver mirror. The tenderness of the 
sunset and the gloaming were yet an hour away, 
and it was three o’clock, the dreary middle age 
of the day. Mr. Oliver had been driving about 
the country all day, but had only picked up Hil- 
liard at lunch-time. His cheeks, with the sparkle 
of the frost in them, and his clear eye, and 
hearty laugh, the very way he handled the reins 
with his hands encased in stout knitted gloves, 
all had a suggestion of country and open-air life 
much in contrast with the town pallor of the 
man beside him. Yet Hilliard looked wholesome 
enough and was by no manner of means a 
sybarite. At school and at college he had been 
an athlete, and loved football and all outdoor 


72 


TUESDA Y AFTERNOON. 73 

games with an enthusiasm seldom revealed. He 
was talking to his host in an interested way. 

I want to know,” he said, “ about the man 
the little girl’s engaged to. I hope for the sake 
of so dainty a bit of femininity that’s he’s not 
a clod-hopper.” 

Reassure yourself, St. Edmund,” said Mr. 
Oliver drily. “ The man’s a university man — 
my own university, T. C. D., by the way. When 
I saw him last he was thoroughly presentable. 
A square-jawed, determined-looking fellow, with 
the stuff in him to take the world by the throat. 
He had a most distinguished career at college, 
and is likely to go far in his profession, I hear. 
He had a paper in the Lancet a few weeks ago 
on a new disease which has broken out in some 
Indian hill-tribe. Why, the man’s so devoted to 
his profession that he has sacrificed the leave of 
absence he might have had this year. He is 
likely to go up a step by remaining on the spot, 
and he’s making a special study of this mysteri- 
ous malady. Not every man would sacrifice 
seeing his sweetheart and having a six months’ 
rest after India, because of some plague-stricken 
blacks or other.” 

“ How does she like it ?” asked Hilliard. 


74 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


“ Well, it’s this way,” replied Mr. Oliver. The 
father — her father — won’t hear of them marrying 
while he’s in India. He has three good years to 
run of his time out there. He’s slaving and 
saving like mad, Jessie tells me. I suppose the 
run home would eat into his pile, and, after all, 
he couldn’t take her away with him. Then 
there’s his pet study hopelessly broken into. 
Sensible fellow to stay, I think.” 

“ I wonder if her father likes the marriage? ” 

“From deductions, I should say not,” said Mr. 
Oliver. “The Hurleys are really poor people, 
though they live comfortably and want for 
nothing. John Hurley has some land under me, 
and he is quite candid with me about his affairs. 
He said to me one day that he had enough left 
to portion the little girls, and the boy could take 
care of himself.” 

“ Sensible fellow ! ” said Hilliard, echoing his 
cousin. 

“ Michael Halloran would be better pleased,” 
Mr. Oliver went on, “if John Hurley could put 
down the red gold for his boy. Michael doesn’t 
believe in the money being all on one side, and 
that his side, of the bargain. You’ll find him an 
extraordinarily shrewd old fellow, yet he has 


TUESDA Y AFTERNOON. 


75 


a primitive nature with it. He wants something 
more tangible than brains and a university train- 
ing and good manners. He will be a little dis- 
believing over these things, and cynically dis- 
posed toward his future son-in-law, till he sees 
the gold guineas rolling in to him for fees. When 
Jim is surgeon-general his father-in-law will begin 
to believe in him, may even get him to leave the 
service, and buy him a practice in Harley Street. 
Old Halloran’s more ambitious than his fellows, 
and every Irish farmer is ambitious. But he 
won’t put down his money till he sees what he’s 
getting for it.” 

“You are a remarkable people,” said St. Ed- 
mund. “ But here comes your man, if I mis- 
take not.” 

“I thought I’d look for you here, Mr. Oliver,” 
said Michael Halloran, advancing from the field- 
gate on which he had been leaning. “ I want 
you to take the silos on your way, and ’twould 
be only turning back. I’m proud to see you, 
sir,” he said, in response to Mr. Oliver’s intro- 
duction of the other man. He climbed on the 
back of the dog-cart, and the talk became en- 
tirely agricultural. Hilliard at first was conscious 
of feeling a little bored,— he was wondering if 


76 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


their visit was to be entirely an out-door one, — 
but after a time he became interested in spite of 
himself. They visited the silos, the heady fermen- 
tation from which made Hilliard reel ; they drove 
across grass land, where a row of patient figures 
were picking stones, to see the fat bullocks, and 
afterward to visit some drainage-works in prog- 
ress in the low-lying fields. St. Edmund was 
delighted with the austerity of the landscape, 
fast turning wintry, though the trees along the 
hill-side were yet wearing cressets. He pointed 
to the women, stooped, going along in the cold 
light. ‘‘A fine subject for Millet,” he said. Mr. 
Oliver translated to the farmer : “ My cousin 
thinks your stone-pickers would make a fine 
picture, Mr. Halloran.” Michael grunted unre- 
sponsively. “ I wish he had to stand over them 
for an hour. There’s more mischief in half a 
dozen women than in a tree full of monkeys.” 

When there was a gate to be opened, Hilliard 
changed places with the farmer. “ Listen to us, 
St. Edmund,” said Mr. Oliver, “ and you’ll derive 
more knowledge from a practical man, like my 
friend here, than from any number of yowx doctri- 
naire papers. Mr. Hilliard is a considerable land 
owner in England,” he explained, “and bears the 


TUESDA Y AFTERNOON. 


77 


reputation of a good landlord. But I doubt if he 
has as many good farmers as you and our friend 
Carmody.” 

Michael Halloran looked as pleased as he knew 
how — in fact, he was embarrassed with pleasure. 
It was his self-consciousness made him take the 
compliment rather for his neighbour than him- 
self. “Aye,” he said, “Tom Carmody’s a fine 
farmer. ’Tis not much waste land you’d see be- 
tween us. Our crops are not prashoge and 
thistles.” 

“ No, indeed,” said Mr. Oliver. “ I wish the 
other farmers could say as much. You’ve always 
the kind neighbours to provide you with the 
thistle-down and the poppy seed. Carmody had 
a splendid wheat crop this year.” 

“Aye,” said Halloran drily. “I overed the 
quality of my own to him one day. There aren’t 
many better crops than came off the stone field. 
Carmody says behind my back that I’m a boaster. 
But when I overed the wheat to him he turned 
red as a turkey-cock, and says he, ‘ Mick Hal- 
loran, man, look across the wall of your stone 
field into my shaug, and if you don’t go and eat 
your head for a boaster after that, you’re not the 
man I take you to be.” 


78 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 

** Carmody’s a good farmer and he knows it/' 
said Mr. Oliver, laughing, but he also values 
you. He says you’re a spur to him. He really 
paid you a very handsome compliment the other 
day. .‘I’m as good a farmer,’ he said, ‘as there 
is in the continent of Europe, but if Michael 
Halloran was ten years a younger man he’d pass 
me.’ Now, aren’t you touched?” 

“ ’Twas handsome of Tom, I’ll allow,” said old 
Halloran, with a faint ironic smile. 

Presently, over the drainage question, the two 
elder men came to business. Halloran wanted an 
allowance off the rent toward the work greater 
than the agent was prepared to grant him. The 
discussion went on with an energy that amused 
Hilliard, loosely holding the reins from his seat 
behind, while the other two stamped and clapped 
hands, and conducted the debate with great 
heartiness. By the time it was settled, the valley 
was full of blue mist, through which distant lights 
showed warmly. 

“You’ll be after turning in for a cup of tea, Mr. 
Oliver,” said the farmer, “ before I show you my 
plan about the cow houses. They’ll be lit up by 
then, and the boys at the milking.” 

Hilliard was glad to get down and stamp about 


TUESDA Y AFTERNOON. 


79 


on his cold feet, and clap his chilly hands to- 
gether. He had enjoyed the drive over the farm 
and the shrewd practical talk, but now he wel- 
comed a change. 

Nora’s parlour was cosey in the firelight and the 
light from the rose-shaded lamp. The room’s in- 
congruities were hidden in the brown gloom be- 
yond the circle of the firelight. Miss Carew sat 
in her easy chair knitting. Nora, very sweet, in a 
soft pink gown, which made her eyes as brown as 
a trout stream, was on the hearth-rug as usual, 
and nursing a small, anxious-eyed Irish terrier 
puppy, own brother to Codger, which had been 
Jessie’s birthday gift to her. She jumped up 
when the gentlemen came in, and stood in the 
circle of the lamplight, with her soft lips smiling 
and her round arms hugging the puppy in a 
childish way. 

All three men were struck in a different way 
with her beauty, and her old father devoured her 
with his eyes. Hilliard said, under his breath, 
thinking of Jim Hurley in India, “Lucky beg- 
gar ! ” and the next moment was leaning over 
Miss Carew’s hand with an almost exaggerated 
courtesy. He was quite struck with the delicate 
air of refinement. “Ah!” he said to himself. 


8o 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


“that is where the little one gets her lady- 
hood.” 

Nora dispensed the tea charmingly, and pres- 
ently the elder men went out of doors, Hilliard 
remaining where he was. He examined the 
puppy and heard his pedigree, and admired the 
silver tuft of hair on his forehead, and the vigor- 
ous, stoutly-knit little form. Nora was highly 
pleased, especially as Rags took kindly to his new 
acquaintance, and ensconced himself very com- 
fortably on the wretched substitute for a lap that 
a man’s knees must seem to a dog. Nora de- 
clared that Rags wasn’t comfortable, but was 
flattered ; which, perhaps, was true. 

The quartette became very good friends. No 
one could have accused Hilliard of languor as he 
sat leaning forward in the firelight, stroking the 
dog, and bringing out the stores of his experi- 
ence to please these two simple women. He 
came from the great world of which only echoes 
had drifted to Coolevara. He knew all the great 
men. and women, had visited Meredith at his 
house in Surrey, and had been the guest of 
Tennyson ; he had sat by George Eliot in her 
corner at some of the Priory Sunday evenings, 
and had been treated with a singular kindness. 


TUESDA Y AFTERNOON. 


Si 

He knew Rossetti, and was enthusiastic over his 
work. His listeners were quite ignorant about the 
pre-Raffaelites, but listened with an intelligent 
greediness. He promised to bring them a Tauch- 
nitz Rossetti, which was his constant companion, 
and mentally resolved that when he returned to 
London he would make aunt and niece a gift of a 
little library of modern poets. For Coolevara had 
not got much later in poetry than Byron and Mrs. 
Hemans, excepting only the Oliver household. 

Hilliard was very careful to disparage no idol 
of these simple people. His amusement at their 
hero-worship, which he could have so easily 
damped, he kept to himself. He felt rather 
envious of the frame of mind which could regard 
literary London as a kingdom of giants, a garden 
wherein one might behold “men like trees walk- 
ing.” He was conscious of doing his best to 
please his hearers, and his amiability gave him a 
comfortable glow. He would not have laid him- 
self out so to win the approval of a duchess, and 
here he was striving all he knew howto please the 
daughter and sister-in-law of an Irish farmer. 
Afterward he concluded, on thinking it over, that 
he must be growing younger. He certainly had 
not once remembered to feel bored. 


82 


THE WA Y OF A MAID. 


Mr. Oliver was highly pleased with him when 
he came in and found the party so friendly, and 
St. Edmund in full flow about some exciting 
adventure. He spoke of it to his wife after- 
ward. “ There’s a lot of good in that lad,” he 
said. “ I wish he had some interest in life. I 
never saw him so animated as he was talking to 
Miss Carew and Halloran’s little girl. I could see 
they were fetched with him, and old Michael was 
as proud as Punch.” 

“ Poor St. Edmund ! ” said Mrs. Oliver. “ Do 
you remember what a bright little lad he was 
when we were married? And afterward when 
he stayed with us, and was up to all manner of 
boyish mischief. How changed he was when we 
saw him again, after a few short years. He had 
grown to look so old, and his face full of lines, and 
he had acquired that lazy, indifferent manner 
which now has grown natural to him.” 

“ An entanglement with a married woman is 
an accursed thing for a boy,” said her husband. 

Mrs. Oliver forgot to rebuke him. 

The poor boy ! ” she said sadly ; “ I wonder 
if he has ever forgotten her. I’m afraid not, for 
sometimes that mark of indifference slips away 
from his face. I found him the other evening 


TUESDA Y AFTERNOON. 


83 


asleep in your smoke-room ; it was after your 
hard morning’s duck shooting. He looked much 
younger than he does when awake. But it was a 
tragical face, too, poor boy, and it made my 
heart ache, for I thought of our own boy 
snatched from all the world’s sorrow.” 

“Poor mother,” said her husband softly ; “I 
wonder if you ever forget your boy.” 

“ Never, dear, sleeping or waking,” she said. 
“ Though I give thanks to God always for you 
and the other dear children. But sure God saw 
his own Son die, and we ought to find his will 
sweet when he appoints us to suffer like himself.” 

“Yes, dear,” said the husband, “and I’d rather 
have him safe with God than his life broken and 
his faith withered, as it is with poor St. Edmund. 
However,” he said, turning with cheerful read- 
iness from this common sorrow, “ I’m not 
without hope for St. Edmund. He’s more 
interested in things this time than I’ve seen him 
for long. You wouldn’t know the boy this 
evening ; he laid himself out so good-naturedly 
to entertain those two unsophisticated creatures.” 

“ How long is it since Mrs. Illingworth died ? ” 
asked Mrs. Oliver. 

“ Ten years,” replied her husband. 


$4 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

It's a long time for a man to remember," said 
Mrs. Oliver. 

“ Illingworth didn’t remember very long," her 
husband commented. “ If I remember rightly 
he consoled himself a year or two after her 
death. She was a lovely creature, certainly, when 
I saw her, though she was something of an 
invalid. Just the woman for a lad to make a 
goddess of." 

“ Carry told me," said Mrs. Oliver, “ that when 
she died St. Edmund took it in a curious way. 
He seemed ever so much happier, and yet 
more when her husband re-married. He seemed 
to think she belonged to him, after all. I have 
often wondered how it began ; it seems so strange 
to me for a married woman to have anything to 
do with any lover except her husband ? " 

“ Well, my dear," said the man, “ in this case it 
was easy enough. It was a case of a beautiful,' 
delicate woman ill-mated with a man not over- 
scrupulous about his pleasures. Then there was 
a hot, generous young fellow full of knight- 
errantry, and so much younger than she, that it 
was quite natural for her to be maternally tender 
toward him. Oh, it was all easy enough ! but I 
will say that few affairs of the kind have been 


TUESDA Y AFTERNOON. 85 

less soiled with earth. If there had been guilt in 
the thing it would have damned the boy. As it 
is it has only saddened him, and kept him from 
forming the ties that would be natural to him. 
Yet, perhaps, in a sense, too, his passion for a 
woman kept him straight amid the many tempta- 
tions of London.” 

“ It may be so,” said Mrs. Oliver, sighing as she 
always sighed when she thought of perils from 
which her own boy was safe. “But I should be 
so glad if I thought poor St. Edmund looked for 
peace in the only place where it is certain to be 
found. I wish he were a believer, poor boy.” 

“ Let him alone,” said her husband. “ I dare 
say he believes more than he pretends.” 

Mr. Oliver was always optimistic about the 
goodness of other people. 

“ By the way, Edith,” he said, “ I was telling 
Father Phelan to-day about your pensioner, Biddy 
Quinn. I came upon her courtesying to his 
reverence with the greatest humility. When she 
had gone off blessing the two of us I told him 
how she had represented herself to you as being 
boycotted by the Catholics because she came of 
a Protestant stock. The good man laughed till 
the tears ran down his jolly face. ^ Why, she 


86 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


always tells me in confidence,’ he said, ‘ that the 
Protestants will do nothing for her because she 
turned.’ She had the grace to exempt you, 
Edith, my dear, for Father Phelan said to her : 
‘ Why, I hear you’ve the run of the kitchen at 
Cromartin, and that's what makes you so fat.’ 
She was taken aback for a minute, but then she 
said, ‘ Thrue for yer reverence, but there’s few 
Protestants like Mrs. Oliver. D’ye think, yer 
reverence, she’ll be saved?’ Phelan enjoyed it, 
I can tell you. He can’t resist a joke.” 

“ Still, I’m sorry,” said Mrs. Oliver plaintively, 
** that Biddy should be so untruthful. But,” 
with a shade of anxiety, “ wasn’t it dangerous to 
tell her priest about her ? ” 

Not a bit,” said Mr. Oliver. “ Father Phelan’s 
a good sort and would laugh even at a joke 
against himself. He says poor old Biddy, despite 
her subterfuges, is an honest soul. She’s very 
good to old Katty who lives with her, and now 
the old thing is down with rheumatism she begs 
for both. Biddy’s always cheerful and smiling, 
and Katty’s temper is no joke. And after all, 
my dear Biddy’s only fulfilling the apostolic 
injunction to be all things to all men.” 

Mrs. Oliver smiled faintly. She thought her 


TUESDA Y AFTERNOON. 


87 


husband infallible, yet she was not quite easy 
in her mind at his joke. “ Poor old Katty,” 
she said musingly : “ I miss her from the roads. 
Just this time of year one always saw her picking 
up her bundle of twigs by the hedges. The road 
was never so lonely as one walked in the shorten- 
ing evenings but one met Katty.” 

Jessie came to the door with a sharp rap. 
“ I’m just going down, dears,” she called in, 
“and the gong will sound immediately.” 

This was the quiet hour of counsel husband 
and wife always had before dinner, when they 
talked over the events of the day. Mr. Oliver 
kissed his wife’s brow and smoothed out a 
wrinkle or two with his fingers, as he stood up. 
He had not yet forgotten to be a lover. 


CHAPTER VI. 


LOVE AND DUTY. 

Michael Halloran was always in bed by 
eight o’clock. He was up at 4.30, winter and 
summer, and in the yard before the earliest 
milker in his employment. He made his own 
cup of tea over a spirit lamp when he got up, and 
then came to breakfast with Nora and her aunt 
at nine. Mary always declared the master gave 
no trouble. He was one of those men whose 
rule is easy where women are concerned. He 
thought it was all right that women should be 
soft and sleep late. If he had had a boy he 
would have believed in the hardening process for 
him, so it was perhaps as well that his one child 
was a daughter. Even when he was hectoring 
toward a woman there was a gentleness in his 
manner which made it tolerable. Men, on the 
contrary, often found him overbearing. 

He had his solid tea when he came in at six 
this evening as usual. Nora read for half an 
hour to him out of the local paper, and by that 


LOFE AND DUTY. 


89 


time he was beginning to nod. So after kissing 
his daughter fondly he took his candle and went 
upstairs. 

Nora and her aunt were accustomed to those 
long evenings in each other s society. In winter 
they never looked for a visitor, though in the 
long summer evenings Father Phelan or one of 
his curates sometimes came in to tea and re- 
mained till ten, or, occasionally, it was one of the 
few ladies who, like Miss Carew, belonged to the 
St. Vincent de Paul Society ; but once the dark 
evenings came they looked for no visitors. They 
were quite happy together usually, Miss Carew 
reading or lace-making, Nora engrossed in a 
novel or book of poems, or doing some frivolous 
little bit of wprk. But to-night she was more 
restless than usual, and inclined for conversation, 
seeing which her aunt put by her story-book and 
took up her lace-making instead. The talk 
naturally turned on the afternoon visitor. 

What do you think of him, dear?” asked 
Nora, with a little anxious air. Miss Carew un- 
derstood, of course, that the Olivers were Nora’s 
friends, and that she was rather proud of it. 

“ I like him,” she replied. “ He has a refined 
face, and he is kind, or he would not have tried 


90 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


SO hard to please us. But he looks, at times, 
rather tired for so young a man. I noticed it 
when he came in, and thought he was an older 
man than he seemed afterward, when he bright- 
ened up.” 

He is really only two years older than Jim,” 
said Nora thoughtfully. ‘‘ But Jim was always 
so eager. He used to say that life was too short 
for all the plans he had in his head. Now, Mr. 
Hilliard looks very much more tired of life than 
papa, who is an old man.” 

“A trouble often makes people look like that,” 
said Miss Carew. And there are lines of trouble 
in that young man’s face.” 

“ Oh, he has had a very sad story, indeed, 
Aunt Sylvia,” said Nora. “ Jessie told me about 
it, but of course it is a great secret. When he 
was quite a boy he had a great friend, a Mrs. 
Illingworth. Jessie says she was as beautiful as 
an angel, though rather delicate, and a great 
many people adored her. She was very sweet to 
Mr. Hilliard, who was a lonely boy, with his 
father and mother dead and his sisters married. 
And her husband behaved badly to her — was a 
very coarse and wicked man, Jessie says. And 
the end of it was, Mr. Hilliard fell hopelessly in 


LOVE AND NUTY. 


91 


love with her. She sent him away when she 
found out, but wasn’t angry with him. I am sure 
there was nothing to be angry about. And she 
died soon afterward. Jessie says he has never 
loved anyone else, or seemed attracted by any 
woman, though that was ten years ago. The 
Olivers think he won’t marry, though Jessie says 
he ought to, for there is his beautiful Overdale in 
the hands of servants all these years, except when 
he takes a shooting party down. Mr. Oliver 
thinks he would make such a good landlord if he 
could only throw off his indolence and take an 
interest. But Jessie says he has been just the 
same since Mrs. Illingworth died, with that man- 
ner nearly always, as if he couldn’t be very much 
surprised or delighted about anything.” 

It is a sad story,” said Miss Carew, after a 
pause ; “ but it might be sadder. After all, he 
has kept his ideal unspotted, and I often think 
there can be no real unhappiness except where 
there is sin.” 

Nora took up one of her aunt’s transparent 
hands and stroked it. 

“ I can’t imagine sin where love is,” she said 
softly — for a girl’s thoughts of love are always so 
dreamy and have so little of earth in them. 


92 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


“ Perhaps he would marry one of your friends/* 
said her aunt, with the air of making a happy 
suggestion. 

“ Perhaps,” assented Nora. 

She was gazing into the fire with her chin 
propped on her hands. She had a vague sense 
of not liking the suggestion. She considered 
it a little with that vague repulsion, still push- 
ing the thought away from her. Yet, why 
should he not ? Either of the girls would make 
a man happy — May, with her strong sense of 
duty, her timid, somewhat narrow, sweetness, 
her high notions about honour and dignity ; 
or Jessie, dear Jessie, with her large heart, 
her clever brains, her strong will ever turned to 
the right. She forced herself to appraise the 
sisters warmly, though some sudden drop of cold- 
ness had come into her heart. 

*‘You believe in women marrying, auntie, 
dear?” queried Nora. 

Oh, yes,” said Miss Carew, with a soft frown. 
“ A happy marriage is a woman’s heaven. That 
is why I am so glad my dear little girl is to be in 
warm and tender keeping.” 

“ Darling,” said Nora, I want you to tell me, 
if it won’t hurt you, why you never married. 


LOVE AND DUTY. 


93 


Don’t tell me, if it hurts you, but forgive me. I 
have often wondered about this,” and she touched 
reverently a quaint. Eastern-looking ring which 
her aunt always wore. 

The ^ider woman covered her eyes with her 
hand, and did not reply. Nora waited in a 
troubled tenderness, and after a minute or two 
Miss Carew spoke. 

“ It doesn’t hurt me to answer you, darling,” 
she said, “ but mine is a sad little story. Its 
memory is very dear to me, but it will sadden 
you, I fear, with your happy love. It is like 
bringing out dead rose-leaves from a jar when the 
room is full of fresh June roses.” 

I don’t know, dear,” answered Nora. “ Don’t 
the young love sadness? I know I always love 
my sad stories most.” 

“ That is because you are happy, dear,” said her 
aunt ; “ and may God keep all sadness from you, 
my pet ! Well, I will tell you my story, since you 
wish for it.” 

Nora settled herself on the rug to listen, and 
laid her cheek against one of her aunt’s hands. 
She drew Rags comfortably on to her skirt. Out- 
side the equinoctial wind began to wail eerily, but 
inside all looked quiet and tender. 


94 


THE WAY OF A MAID, 


“ I was the eldest of a large family, as you 
know, dear,” Miss Carew began. “ They are all 
scattered now. Susan and Katie with your dear 
mother in heaven ; Richard and Patrick and Alice 
and Eily far away in America, and living their 
own lives. Well, I suppose I was pretty, as a 
young girl, but my dear mother died when I was 
only a slip of sixteen, and there were all those 
children ; and my father — God rest him ! — was a 
hard man, though just and conscientious. I had 
to mother them all, and I had to stand between 
them and his severity, without any of the right 
and authority my mother would have had. So I 
had very little time to think whether I was pretty 
or not. 

“ Looking back at it now, I think it would have 
been better for us all if my father had married 
again ; but he beguiled himself into thinking 
that it was his sense of duty to us kept him 
single, and it was one of the things he used 
to hold up to the boys when he began to have 
words with them, and that was as soon as they 
had the down on their lips. I had no power over 
him, and he thought he was always in the right. 
I could only comfort the poor children when he 
was harsh with them, and he was often harsh, I 


LOVE AND DUTY. 


95 


knew him to knock down the boys for question- 
ing his will, and though he never struck a woman, 
he has bruised me with his grasp when he was 
pushing me out of the room, I having come 
trembling to him on an office of mediation.” 

Miss Carew paused and sighed deeply. If 
Nora had only known, she was thinking of the 
far-away match-making of her young sister with 
Michael Halloran which had ended so sadly. 
After a minute or two she went on: 

“ My father never thought of my marrying. I 
was too useful to him, and I was better content 
to remain single. We hadn’t much free choice in 
those days about ourlovers. People would have 
been ready enough to make my match, but I had 
a horror of having things settled for me in that 
way. I used to run away and lock myself up 
when any busybody came mooting such a thing 
to my father. He was generally quick enough to 
dismiss them, and, indeed, I don’t know how he’d 
have managed without me. So the years went 
by, and the young ones grew up, and dearly as 
they loved me they pushed me into the back- 
ground. The young ones had whatever gaieties 
were going. If their friends came to the house it 
was I who saw that their entertainment was right. 


96 THE WA Y OF A MAID. 

and everything made comfortable for them ; but 
when there were pic-nics or excursions, or any- 
thing of the sort, it came to be understood that I 
should stay at home to have things pleasant when 
the merry-makers returned. I acquiesced in the 
position, and was really quite happy at home. 
But I had no time to make friends. I remember 
that one or two people offered me friendship. I 
was invited to visit people whose friendship would 
have been pleasant to me, but at the mere whis- 
per of my going away there was always such 
clamour and consternation that I yielded and re- 
fused my invitation. The young ones all loved 
me, and looked to me for everything. They 
made a barrier round me with their noisy young 
affection, and pushed away those who might 
have comforted me when they themselves had 
gone their own way and made their own 
lives.” 

How selfish ! ” interrupted Nora, with a kin- 
dling face of indignation. 

Selfish ! ” echoed her aunt. Perhaps it was, 
but I made them selfish. Self-sacrifice is good in 
its way, my Nora, but we must take care that we 
don’t sacrifice ourselves to the detriment of 
others. Well, the years passed, and one day I 


LOVE AND DUTY. 


97 


awoke to the fact that my prettiness had faded. 
I had never thought very much about my looks, 
yet it gave me a pang to look in the glass and see 
that my golden curls had faded, my eyes had 
faded, and my skin had taken a dried look quite 
unlike the down and bloom of my young sisters. 
I was one of those fair women who are really 
more faded at thirty than they are twenty years 
later. I had not ceased to be pretty, but a dul- 
ness had come over my prettiness. You see, 
dear, I have an impersonal feeling to that girl in 
the glass of nearly a score years ago, and can dis- 
cuss her impartially.’' 

“ Poor girl!” murmured Nora, with a soft kiss 
on her aunt’s slim fingers. 

“ Well,” Miss Carew continued, “ not so long 
after that the poor girl was a rich and radiant 
girl. There came to our house one day, with 
some visitors, a captain in the merchant service, 
who was staying with his mother at Ardmore, 
where she had come for the sea-bathing. I 
thought at first sight that he had the most honest 
face I ever saw. The sun and the sea wind had 
tanned him, but his forehead under the peak of 
his cap was white as a child’s ; his features were 
irregular, but his eyes looked at one with a clear, 


98 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

direct gaze, and his smile was very friendly. He 
became quite good friends with us, and returned 
again and again to our house. The boys adored 
him, and he flirted with the girls in a jolly impar- 
tial way, so that not a girl of the neighbourhood 
could say he singled her out. Anyone might 
hear his pretty speeches, which, indeed, he never 
uttered under his breath ; the girls were agreed 
that so far as they were concerned he was a sort 
of detrimental, for the prettiest girl in the neigh- 
bourhood could not flatter herself that she had 
made any serious impression on him. It was a 
long time before I really allowed myself to be- 
lieve that he used to turn from them and look at 
me with something quite different in his expres- 
sion. But presently I had to believe it, for every- 
one else began to believe it. One day I was not 
present, but he was surrounded by the prettiest 
girls in the county; your dear mother was there 
and your aunts Alice and Eily. They had all 
agreed to treat him as he treated them, bandying 
compliments and jests with a great deal of inno- 
cent laughter. Presently Eily asked him who 
was the prettiest girl he knew. They thought 
he’d answer it aptly with a compliment that 
should include all. To their amazement he an- 


LOVE AND DUTY. 


99 


swered, seriously : ‘Your sister Sylvia : she is the 
most beautiful woman in all the world/ ” 

Miss Carew suddenly covered her face with her 
hands and gave a little dry sob. She recovered 
herself in a minute or two and went on : “I was 
really that to him, the most beautiful woman in 
the world. Others might see the dulness of my 
hair and my faded eyes and skin, but whatever 
scales were on his eyes he saw me transfigured. 
He used to tell me that I was so delicate in his 
sight that he was afraid to breathe on me lest I 
should vanish. That was the strangest thing of 
all to me, I, who had been so long at everyone’s 
beck and call ; I who was never allowed to be 
tired, that I should be so infinitely cared for, so 
precious, so delicate in the eyes of this man. He 
began to take care of me at once, even before I 
had promised to be his wife. It came to be an 
understood thing that he was my property, and 
that when he came we were to be left alone. He 
wasn’t gay with me, at all ; in his quiet moments 
he was even sad. I didn’t care for the amused 
eyes of the onlookers. I just sank into his love 
and tenderness as into the most exquisite rest. 

“ People us^d to tell me I had grown as young 
as the youngest, and that I grew prettier every 


lOO 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


day. Perhaps I acquired some of the wild-rose 
beauty he saw in me, and which, perhaps, I might 
have had in my early girlhood. Why not ? With 
a spirit so wonderfully transformed, why should 
not the body be transformed too, and the radi- 
ance within send some glory shining through. I 
believe there was never so happy a woman in all 
the world as I, Sylvia Carew, in those days. I 
was in no hurry for him to speak ; I was so sure 
he would speak in time, and I wanted to take my 
happiness by degrees. And then one day, when 
we were sitting together, he asked me to become 
his wife. I have not told you that he was a Prot- 
estant, and in those days it was far more unheard 
of for Catholics and Protestants to marry than it 
is now. But somehow I was not anxious about 
that, though I should perhaps have seen grave 
cause for anxiety if it were another girl and not 
myself. I never thought that his love could be 
anything but a gift of God, and once we were en- 
gaged I used to thank God with trembling, for it 
seemed to me that as his wife his soul would be 
in my charge as well as his dear body. When I 
said he was a Protestant I meant that he had been 
brought up as a Protestant, but his beliefs were 
very undogmatic. He had a simple faith in God, 


LOVE AND DUTY. 


lOI 


the faith of one whose life is passed looking on 
the merits of God, and he had a strong moral 
sense of right and wrong. He was a good man, 
if ever one lived.” 

“ I am sure he was good or you would never 
have loved him,” murmured the girl at her 
knee. 

The elder woman went on dreamily : “ He 

was a most passionate lover. Oh, indeed, I have 
had my day, for no women was ever better loved. 
No one made us unhappy. Old Canon Segears 
had a talk with him and then came and told me 
that he was a good man, and that God would 
bless our union. My father, after Richard had 
spoken to him, called me to his room, as he was 
going to bed, and said, with a softness I had 
never known in him before : ^ So my girl is going 
to be happy. Well, none ever better deserved 
her happiness.’ 

“ He was very sharp with the young ones 
when they cried out that my marriage must 
be postponed a long time. It was ar- 
ranged for April, less than two months off, and I 
had little time enough to get ready. The days 
passed like a golden dream. It seems to me, 
looking back, that I didn’t walk on the earth in 


102 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

those days at all. His ship was to be ready the 
week of our marriage. He had fitted up a cabin 
for his bride, and the voyage was to be our 
honeymoon. It was to be to strange beautiful 
places in the South Seas, which he used to de- 
scribe for me with great delight. It was a week 
from my wedding-day when the terrible trouble 
came.” 

She was silent, looking into the past, with a 
strange rigid look. Nora crept up closer to her, 
and whispered, What happened then, darling?” 

Miss Carew came back to the present with a 
start. She went on : 

It was all my own fault, my own fault. 
He had always wanted to tell me, but I 
would not listen. Even before he asked me to 
be his wife, he told me he had a sad secret in his 
life that he would tell me about some day. ‘ Yes, 
someday,’ I said, being so happy that I wanted 
to push off from us all that savoured of unhappi- 
ness. Again he tried to tell me the day he asked 
me to marry him, and I would not listen. I 
thought there was plenty of time for telling sad 
secrets in the whole life we were to spend 
together. I only wanted happy secrets then, I, 
who had been so long starved of love, that I 


LOVE AND DUTY. 


T03 


sucked it up, when it came, as a starved plant in a 
pot sucks in the long delayed water. I think I 
felt, too, that the telling would be painful to him. 
He always approached it with a saddening of 
his happy face. And so I kept pushing it off, 
pushing it off. 

It was a week to our marriage day when 
he compelled me to listen. He looked so grave 
that I felt a sudden chill. ^ Tell me first,’ I said, 
* it is nothing that could separate us.’ ‘ Oh, no,’ 
he said, with a startled look, ^ nothing that could 
separate us. Why, what could separate us 
now ? ’ But for his will I should have evaded it 
even then. Thank God, we were saved ! though 
we lost our- wonderful land of promise, a land 
that seemed fairer than any Eden to our happy 
eyes. 

“ I remember how he began to tell me, hold- 
ing my hands. He had no idea of the terrible 
revelation he was going to make. He was only 
very fearful, very ashamed to tell me, whom he 
thought so pure, about the wicked woman who 
was his wife. For, my dear, he was a divorced 
man, and his wife was living. He had not the 
remotest thought that I could not marry him. 
He was only troubled and distressed at having to 


104 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

tell his new, true wife of the woman who had de- 
ceived his young faith, and dragged his honour 
in the mire, and nearly broken his honest heart. 
I don’t know how I got away from him. I 
dragged myself from him, and ran out of the 
room with a blind instinct to hide myself from all 
human eyes. I stumbled on my father just out- 
side the door. I gasped to him : ‘ Richard — go 
to him. Ask him to tell you — explain to him ! ’ 
and then, eluding him, I rushed upstairs, and 
locked myself in my room. 

“ After that I was ill. I remember a shivering 
and a blind stupor, and feeling paralysed with 
cold and then parched with heat. After that 
nothingness, and then I woke up to -brighter days 
and to find myself very weak, and lying with a 
cropped head in my familiar room. The day 
that was to have been my wedding day was over 
and gone. It was May, and I always dread May 
and its unending twilights for that May’s sake. 

“ I crept back to life somehow, but very 
slowly. Everyone was very tender to me, but 
I was nearly well when, one day, my father came 
and sat by me, and told me everything, more 
tenderly than any woman could have done. 
Poor father, I like to think of his goodness to 


LOVE AND DUTY. 


105 

me, then. Richard was gone away on the lonely 
voyage that was to have been his honeymoon. 
No one blamed him ; it had all happened in such 
utter ignorance. I heard afterward how he had 
raged furiously at first, and swore that nothing 
should take me from him. But afterward I was 
thought to be dying, and his passion was extin- 
guished under his agony and remorse. They 
said he used to walk up and down in the night 
and rain watching my windows. The delicate 
things, wine and fruit and jellies, that I had had 
in my convalescence, came from him. No one 
had the heart to refuse them, and he used to 
send to London, to Covent Garden and such 
places, for the greatest rarities for me. And as 
soon as he knew my life was saved he went 
away. He gave my father a letter to be given to 
me as soon as I was able for it. There were only 
a few words: ‘Forgive me. I never knew. 
Will you keep my few gifts, and still wear my 
ring ? I shall always think of you as my be- 
loved wife, and if I am ever free to claim you, I 
will come.’ 

“ There, my darling, that is all my story, and 
that is the secret of my ring. What, crying ! ” as 
she lifted up Nora’s face, which had been buried 


io 6 the V/A Y of a maid. 

in her lap. “ Dear, tender-hearted child, don’t 
cry, it is all so long ago. Nearly the length of 
your whole life.” 

“ Did you never hear of him ? ” whispered 
Nora out of her tears. 

“ Once or twice I read that his ship had 
touched at foreign ports. But never directly. 
He may be dead. He would never come back 
to me unless he were free, and now, if he is 
living, we are both quite old people. I scarcely 
look now to see his face in this world.” 

“I’m sure,” said Nora, “that if he came, he 
would think you just as lovely as ever.” 

“ I’m not sure that he wouldn’t,” replied her 
aunt, with a happy lighting-up of her face. Old 
as she was she had not forgotten to be sure of 
her lover. 


CHAPTER VII. 


THE FIRST STEP. 

The fine autumn weather was succeeded by 
a dripping, black November. Every little stream 
in the valley was roaring and turbulent, and the 
road was carpeted with the black sodden leaves 
that a month ago had hung out gold and scarlet 
banners along the mountain sides. The hills hid 
their heads in the mist, and the wisps of cloud 
drifted down in the valley and tangled about 
your feet. Sometimes you walked with your 
head and shoulders in clear air and your feet 
hidden ; or, again, the valley was so full of solid 
mist that a stranger coming upon it, round the 
winding hill road from Coolevara, might take it 
to be a lake, and the swelling purple hill flanks 
its rocky, precipitious shore. It was neuralgic 
weather, and even the robin on the dripping 
boughs had barely a stave. 

Nora Halloran was enduring a period of vague 
misery. Alternations of health and spirits were 
common enough with her, and might to some 

107 


lo 8 the way of a maid. 

extent be accounted for by the circumstances of 
her birth. Those who saw Nora only in her 
sweet and gay moments could scarcely imagine 
what she was in the days when all her world 
seemed stale and flat, a pricked bubble from 
which the iridescence has departed, leaving 
nothingness. She lost even interest in her 
frocks, and would spend half the day in her 
room wrapped up shiveringly in her dressing- 
gown. Only for her father she would have re- 
mained in bed with her face turned to the wall, 
but, indulgent as he was, he would have no lying 
in bed except in case of illness. So Nora moaned 
all day with her small face puffed out as you see 
a robin’s feathers in the cold, her eyes sombre 
and dull, and the very rings of her hair uncurled 
from their little sweet clusters. 

Miss Carew always grieved over those days of 
depression, but was too used to their occurrence 
to be uneasy. She waited quietly till they went 
by, knowing that some morning or evening Nora 
would come to her, clothed and in her right mind, 
and silently ask forgiveness with a kiss. This 
time the return to happiness was rather longer 
about coming than usual. The blue fit had suc- 
ceeded a period of dreamy exaltation in which 


THE FIRST STEP. 109 

the girl would come in from the purple and 
scarlet autumn evening, and sit in the half-light 
on the rug, hugging her knees, and smiling into 
the heart of the fire. Miss Carew watched this 
phase with a very tender sympathy, believing she 
understood some of the thoughts it betokened. 

Mr. Hilliard had come again once or twice, 
with a book of poetry or a magazine for his 
credentials, and had sat with them, talking in his 
musical, well-bred voice, and telling them wonder- 
ful anecdotes till there was only time for him to 
get back for dinner at Cromartin. Then there 
had been a period of anxious suspense, when 
Rags had had the distemper, and Mr. Hilliard 
had been so kind with sympathy and advice. 
Rags was convalescent now and basking in a 
little hamper by Miss Carew’s knee. Nora at 
present took no interest in the dear little beast, 
and the care of him was transferred to her aunt. 
It was ten days since Hilliard’s last visit. Hunt- 
ing had begun, and such festivities as the country 
people knew were in full swing. This was proba- 
bly the reason why for ten whole days Jessie, the 
faithful Jessie, seemed to have forgotten her 
friend. 

Mary came in to replenish Miss Carew’s fire, 


no 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


which had been sulking all day in sympathy with 
the weather and the little mistress of the house. 
Miss Carew was at her desk writing, and Mary 
took advantage of her absorption to pour in 
a little paraffin oil which made a merry blaze. 
The lady wrote on, unheeding. Mary expected 
a rebuke. Paraffin oil was her great panacea for 
bad fires — also for smoky chimneys. When she 
had once succeeded in setting a chimney on fire, 
and, as she called it, ch’atin’ the sweeps,” she 
was happy enough to put up with the reproof 
that followed. It was fortunate Michael Hal- 
loran’s rick-yard was a safe distance from his 
house chimneys. 

Mary sat backward on her heels, and contem- 
plated the leaping fire with much satisfaction. 
She coughed tentatively once or twice, but Miss 
Carew was too absorbed to heed her. At last 
she spoke. Miss Nora’s up in that perishin’ 
cowld room, ma’am. I axed her to let me light 
a bit of a fire, but she said ‘ No ! ’ in a perished, 
miserable kind of way. D’ye think I could coax 
her out of her blue-mowldiness, ma’am ? ” 

I wish you’d try, Mary,” said Miss Carew, 
looking round. 

Now, Mary’s eccentric way' of looking at things 


THE FIRST STEP. 


Ill 


often made Nora laugh in full flood-tide of her 
misery, and with the laugh the blue devils were 
exorcised ; so her suggestion was not without 
reason. 

She gathered up her awkward bulk from the 
rug and went upstairs. She knocked at the door, 
and, receiving no answer, went in. Her young 
mistress was in tears, dull tears, which had evi- 
dently been coming for some time, and were not 
the result of any sudden spring freshet. She was 
lying on her bed, and did not look round as 
Mary shambled in. 

“ Get up, Miss Nora, jewel,” she said, an’ I’ll 
brush your hair. And after that, if I was you, 
I’d be getting out for a walk. You’ve been in 
the house three days, sorra less, an’ that ’ud be 
enough to blue-mowld anyone. Maybe you’d be 
after goin’ to see the Miss Olivers now ? ” 

Nora turned round at the suggestion. But 
they haven’t asked me, Mary,” she said, ‘‘ and it 
seems quite an age since I’ve seen them.” 

“ Och,” said Mary, “sure you wouldn’t have 
them sendin’ out billy duxes to ax ye to drop in 
for a cup o’ tay. I knows their ways. They’ll be 
sittin’ in the drawing-room about four o’clock, 
hopin’ somebody ’ll drop in. I can hear Miss 


II2 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


Jessie sayin*, ^ Isn’t it a wonder Miss Nora 
Halloran wouldn’t be that friendly to drop 
over.’ ” 

Nora got up languidly from her bed, but there 
were the beginnings of a little hopeful smile 
about her lips. “ I think I’ll take your advice, 
Mary,” she said, ‘^and go out. It’s more depress- 
ing indoors than out to-day.” ^ 

She sat at the glass while Mary brushed her 
rough curls to silkiness. * She certainly felt much 
more cheerful now she was up. She wondered 
why she had not thought of the expedition to 
Cromartin herself. Certainly Jessie and Mr. 
Hilliard had called quite unceremoniously on her 
about the hour of afternoon tea, but she was still 
a little shy of Mr. and Mrs. Oliver. However, 
now Mary had suggested the expedition, the 
touch of nervousness only made it more adven- 
turous. Mary, looking at the brightening face in 
the glass, congratulated herself on her success. 

Miss Nora,” she said, “ did ye hear tell what 
Ned Healy said to Father Dunphy when his 
reverence axed him if he was marryin’ Katty 
Brady for love ? Ye know her, miss ; she’s my 
mother’s second cousin, an’ is as ould as Methu- 
selah’s cat, but a hard-workin’, dacent woman.” 


i 



THE FIRST STEP. 


113 

“ No, Mary,’' said Nora. “ What reply did 
Ned make ? ” 

“ He’s a very ignorant man,” said Mary, with a 
sly twinkle in her eye. “ He answered his river- 
ence : ‘ No, indeed, then ; I’m takin’ her to wash 
my shirt an’ mend my duds.’ ” 

“ That was very matter-of-fact, Mary,” com- 
mented Nora. “ I shouldn’t like to be married 
for such a reason.” 

Oh., you, Miss Nora ! ” said Mary, scandalised 
at the suggestion. “ What good would you be 
to a man for them purposes ? ” which, indeed, 
was quite true, though not according to Mary’s 
meaning. 

“ If I ever thought of marrying,” Mary went 
on, “ I’d take my poor mother’s advice.” 

“ What was that, Mary ? ” asked her mistress. 

“ Och, she told me to keep the lob safe, and 
spend it in food for myself. ‘ He’ll ate up all 
you can give him,’ she says ; ‘ but do you have a 
hearty male behind the door while he’s out, an’ 
when he comes in put on a Dianya look an’ say : 
“ Sure, I can’t touch a bit at all, at all.” He’ll 
think more about you.’ ” 

Mary’s imitation of the “ Dianya look ” and the 
die-away voice was inimitable. 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


II4 

“ That^s very alarming, Mary,” said Nora. 
“ Do you mean to say he’d be better pleased if 
you eat nothing ? ” 

That’s my opinion, miss,” replied Mary em- 
phatically, ‘‘and my mother’s before me. I’ve a 
very small opinion of men, miss,” she went on. 
“ I’d like to know where you’d get a man to 
aiqual the goodness of your aunt, now ! Or 
Mrs. Oliver, let alone that she’s a Protestant ! 
Did ye hear. Miss Nora, the settin’-down I gev 
Joe the saddler ? ” 

Nora had indeed heard it from her window the 
preceding morning, but had been too dismal to 
enjoy it. Now she encouraged Mary to tell the 
story. 

“ The man’s a widdy man, wid six childher, an’ 
I don’t say he’d have had the impidence to be 
cockin’ his cap at me if it hadn’t been put into 
his head. I was pluckin’ a fowl very quiet in the 
coal-house, an’ Mrs. Quinn was pickin’ potatoes 
outside. She and Joe were discoursin’, little 
knowin’ whose ears were open beside them. She 
began tellin’ him about the lob. ‘ I’d advise ye, 
Joe,’ she says, ‘to be lookin’ after her. She’s 
yalla, but not ill-lookin’, an’ she’s a strong girl 
as ’ud keep a tight hand over them gossoons of 


THE FIRST STEP. 


I15 

yours.’ He said nothin’, but, like the parrot, he 
thought the more, for, the next mornin’, when I 
was washin’ out the kitchen, he come an’ I’aned 
over the half-door an’ axed a light o’ the pipe. 
‘Get out, you microby ! ’ I said, ‘an’ don’t 
be fillin’ up my kitchen,’ an’ then, before he 
could say by your I’ave, I gave him lamb and 
salad.” 

Nora had heard “ the lamb and salad ” deliv- 
ered by Mary, leaning over the half-door, while 
the unfortunate saddler tried to drown her 
personal remarks by hammering briskly in the 
harness room. 

“ I don’t think you’ll ever marry, Mary,” said 
Nora, attiring herself in her furs. 

“ ’Deed I don’t think I will,” said Mary. “My 
opinion of men is too poor. I never could put 
myself under them like Mrs. Kendrick with John, 
and the starched shirt she must always have for 
him on Sundays. An’ a rose-bud, no less ! An’ 
then Mrs. Quinn with Pat an’ the newspapers. 
She’s always ’moiderin’ me to put by the papers 
for him — says Pat Quinn is a scholar an’ a gentle- 
man, the foolish ould woman! I’d like well to 
be workin’ for the likes of him, an’ he sittin’ in 
bed readin’ the papers.” 


Ii6 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

But he’s an invalid, Mary,” said Nora. 

“ I believe ’tis half laziness is on him,” said 
Mary grimly. If he was mine. I’d see if I 
couldn’t belt him out of bed.” 

Nora was smiling at this concluding remark as 
she went downstairs. She carried the little shy, 
deprecating smile with her into the parlour, 
where Miss Carew was still at her desk. “ Going 
out, darling ?” the latter said, looking up. She 
was well pleased at Mary’s success. “You do well 
to go out,” she went on. “ Young people need 
air and exercise more than an old lazybones like 
myself.” 

The world seemed quite a new world when 
Nora got outside. Though the boughs were 
dripping, and the fog clinging chillily to her face 
and hair, she walked along with a brisk sense of 
exhilaration. She wondered why her world need 
have been so melancholy a little while ago. She 
resolved for the thousandth time that the next fit 
would not find her so easy a victim. She thought 
of a dozen reasons to make her happy. Next 
mairday would surely bring her one of Jim’s 
faithful letters. Rags — dear little Rags! — was 
over his illness, and would soon be trotting after 
her again. She had those new Liberty patterns 


THE FIRST STEP. 


117 

to look over, and her pony, which had been eat- 
ing his head off for the last few days, must be 
exercised to-morrow. Perhaps Jessie would come 
with her for a ride — perhaps Mr. Hilliard, too. 
Then Mr.' Hilliard might give her the new book 
he had promised her. Her spirits kept going up 
as she went along, and secure in her loneliness 
and the fog, she took cheerful little runs now and 
again, skipping and singing to a tune in her mind, 
like a child. 

She was trotting steadily up the hill to Cro- 
martin when the smell of a cigar suddenly made 
her pulses beat with a little excitement. In a 
minute more she came upon Mr. Hilliard, leaning 
on a gate overlooking the invisible house-tops of 
Coolevara. He lifted his hat with an eager look 
of pleasure. 

“ My cousins are gone to the Rectory to tea,” 
he said, “ and I was thinking of coming over to 
you with Pater’s ' Imaginary Portraits,’ which I 
promised to bring. There is a fancy-fair or some- 
thing of the sort, under discussion, and I wasn’t 
wanted. And Mr. Oliver had business in Lim- 
erick, and has been away since early morning. 
So I was quite lost and stranded.” 

He looked at her with very eloquent eyes. 


Ii8 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

Nora blushed and hesitated. She said some- 
thing about having wanted to see Jessie. 

“ Oh, that’s all right,” he said, “ for she said to- 
day she’d ride over to you to-morrow morning, 
and commissioned me to tell you so. But now, 
are you going to take me back with you and give 
me some tea? There’s no one in the house here, 
except the maids.” 

‘‘ I suppose so,” said Nora ; and so they went 
back the way she had come, through the mist. 
They didn’t go at all so briskly. In fact, they 
rather dawdled. Nora’s first excitement at meet- 
ing him had changed to a sense of troubled 
sweetness. She wanted the walk to be long, and 
felt guiltily glad when he suggested a detour. 
She didn’t want to take him in and share his 
conversation with Aunt Sylvia. At least, not just 
yet ; though it was delightful, too, to make tea for 
him from the hissing brass kettle, and to pour it 
out and hand it to him, scarcely lifting her eyes 
because of something in his gaze which she was 
half afraid to meet. She had never felt like that 
with Jim; with Jim she had always been quite 
self-possessed. This sw^et flurry that set her 
heart beating in her ears, as she went, was quite 
a new sensation to her. She talked fast and 


THE FIRST STEP. 


I19 

nervously, her companion watching her with an 
intent sideways look. They took the road 
through a mountain wood high above the House 
by the Mill. Presently it would begin descend- 
ing, and would land them on the road that ran 
by Nora’s house-door. 

Not a soul was abroad, and dusk was gath- 
ering over the landscape. There was a round 
moon, red as blood, in the fog, and the trees rose 
ghostly, seeming to grow in mid-air without 
roots or solid ground. As they came near the 
wood, it loomed gigantic : the branches of it 
might have been tapping against the stars. It 
was a very open wood of slender mountain 
birch and pine trees that made a lace-like roof 
overhead, but as the twilight thickened it was 
eerie, the tall tree shapes looming suddenly out 
of the mist, and an occasional sound, the snap- 
ping of a twig or the scurrying of a rabbit, 
coming to them muffled out of the wall of vapour. 

Once or twice Nora started nervously, and 
presently her companion, leaning down to her, 
said, in a curiously intense voice : “ Are you 

frightened ? Please take my arm.” 

The words were the most ordinary, but Nora, 
as she slipped her little hand on his sleeve, 


120 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


felt half elated and half frightened. If she had 
only known, Hilliard was exercising strong con- 
trol over himself not to put his arm about her. 
“No,” he said to himself, furiously; “don’t 
treat the child like a barmaid, because she hap- 
pens to be simple and innocent.” Nevertheless 
he drew the soft little hand into his arm, and 
patted it reassuringly, as he might have done 
with a child’s. 

“ Now tell me,” he said, “ what you have been 
doing with yourself since I’ve seen you. By-the- 
way, what an eternity it is ! It was a week last 
Thursday — was it not?” 

“Yes,” asserted Nora, well-pleased that he 
should remember exactly. “ But Jessie and every- 
one has forgotten me, since then. I believe I’ve 
really been sulking these last few days because 
no one came near me. I had one of my bad 
fits, when the fog gets into my heart. I often 
have them, and I hate myself afterwards, for 
they make everyone so wretched about me.” 

“ Poor little child ! ” said the man. “ You 
should never be sad — you with life and love 
and the world before you.” 

“ But I am very sad at times,” said Nora, with 
a pathetic simplicity. “ Aunt Sylvia says its my 


THE FIRST STEP. 


I2I 


health. Aunt Sylvia is so good that she makes 
excuses for everybody — perhaps it is, but any- 
how I do not seem to have the will to fight my 
depressions, though I make such good resolutions 
in between. Have you never felt like that ? 

said Hilliard, with concentrated bitter- 
ness. ‘‘ When have I felt anything else ? I 
don’t cry or sulk, as I might if I were a woman, 
— I have learned the dull patience that comes 
when a man knows that the desire of his heart 
can never be fulfilled. Why, child, if I could be 
entirely unhappy, there would be some chance 
for me in this world. As it is, for years and 
years, I have not known what it is to have sen- 
sations like other men ; joy or hope or ambition, 
or even fear. I am like the unhappy soul in the 
poem, 

“ ‘ Fallen too low for special fear.’ 

It will be like that to the end.” 

Nora did not know what to say in reply to this 
sudden outbreak. Half-unconsciously she pressed 
a little closer to him as she would have done with 
any woman who was troubled. He took up her 
hand and kissed it. Then he laughed drily, and 
said : 

“Forgive me, you poor child, for frightening 


122 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


you with my heroics ! God knows why I’ve 
said such things to you ! I’m not a sentimental 
egotist, believe me, and I have not spoken like 
this for years. I don’t know why you drew it 
out of me, you soft, pretty child,” he went on. 
“ You should hear prettier stories than the con- 
fidences of a man who gave everything he had to 
give to a woman who was never his, and who 
could never in any circumstances have forgotten 
herself for his sake.” 

“ But,” said Nora tremblingly, “ if you were 
good and she was good ! ” 

“Yes,” he said, “that ought to comfort me, 
and does, when I am in my right mind. Yet 
there is many a time when I feel only rage 
against myself that I went away from her when 
she bade me. It seems to me she was mine by 
every right, the woman God meant for me ; and 
the man who stood between us, — well, I cannot 
say it to you, — he had outraged her beyond en- 
durance. Yet I left her to him. I let that poor 
human convention of a marriage that was no 
marriage stand between us. Comfort ! why, my 
God, I have often thought I lost her because I 
had not the manhood to seize her and keep her, 
and leave him like a dog to his vomit !” 


THE FIRST STEP, 


123 


“ Oh ! ” said Nora, with a little gasp. “ But 
you would have been much more unhappy if you 
had made her wicked, and shut her out of 
heaven.” 

“I know of no heaven,” he said, “but the 
heaven of love. If she had been mine she could 
have taught me to believe. I believed when I 
was a boy, but when she died I gave up believing. 
No kind God could have wrecked her life and 
mine.” 

Nora mentally resolved to pray for him, though 
she knew she was indolent about praying. It is 
nearly always a good woman’s beginning of love — 
the fear for a man’s soul and the thought of pray- 
ing for him. But she had forgotten to be shy 
with him. The feeling of the moment was too 
intense for that. All the undoubting faith which 
was her inheritance gave her words to answer' 
him. 

“ Oh,” she said, “ you must not say such things. 
God is kind, and loves both you and her. It 
only seems so strange and cruel because we can- 
not understand. A good love can never be 
wasted : God must save it up for us somewhere. 
You only say such wild things because you are 
unhappy; and God will forgive you.” 


124 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


She rather wondered at herself when she paused 
and had time to think, but the words seemed to 
have come with the occasion. 

Hilliard’s passionate outburst was over. He 
said sadly: 

“ How fortunate you are to have such faith ! It 
must make everything easy. Why, if I believed, 
if I could, believe, that I should meet her again 
and be happy, I could wait through ages. But 
your heaven is far away from human thoughts 
and desires, and you cannot understand how the 
mere human part of a man cries out for the 
woman he loves.” 

“ I can understand a little,” said Nora quietly. 

But I am too ignorant and not good enough to 
be able to comfort you. My faith is a poor thing 
in comparison with the faith of others — my aunt’s 
faith, for example, or the faith of Mary Hurley, 
who went into her convent yesterday with more 
delight that any earthly bride. I wish you could 
know their faith — it would help you. But I am 
sure you must be glad in your innermost heart 
that you were good and she was good.” 

Hilliard was not quite sure that he agreed with 
her, but he made no demur. He felt touched 
and softened by her innocent kindness. They 


THE FIRST STEP, 


25 


walked along in an eloquent silence. Soon they 
were walking up the wooded avenue to the House 
by the Mill. The trees met overhead in a thick 
enlaced mass of boughs. Presently the house 
loomed, with its cheerful lights, and Nora began 
to hurry. “ I fe^ we have been a very long time 
on the way,” she said, “ and I hope Aunt Sylvia 
will not be worrying. I did not tell her I thought 
of going to Cromartin.” 

“Don’t go in for a moment,” he said, just be- 
fore th5y emerged on the winding gravel-path 
that led to the hall door ; “ I want to thank you 
for being kind to me, for being my little friend 
and comforter.” 

He took both her hands and raised them to 
his lips. She looked at him with her eyes up- 
lifted, her lips parted. A sudden tremor seized 
the man, something strong and fierce which he 
thought had been purged out of him years ago. 
He bent suddenly and kissed her. She gave a 
little cry, half terror, half something else. 

“ You shouldn’t ” sh^ began, and then 

sprang back in the darkness and covered her 
burning face. 

“ Forgive me,” he pleaded, “ and don’t think 
me a wretched cad. I couldn’t help it.” He 


126 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


stood with his face working, his nostrils quiv- 
ering. He had to exercise all restraint to keep 
himself from catching her up in his arms. 

She was the first to recover herself. You had 
better go away,” she said. “I will tell Aunt 
Sylvia you brought me home, but could not 
wait.” 

“ Am I to go forever ? ” he whispered. 

Oh, no,” said Nora; “but you must never, 
never do that again.” 

An hour ago she could not have believed she 
could speak to him with such a little dignified air 
of reproof, though her heart was beating wildly. 

“ Let me come in ?” he pleaded. “ If you send 
me away I shall not believe that you have for- 
given me.” 

He really was only conscious of the desire to 
be with her a little longer. So they went in to- 
gether, Nora with a new air of timorousness and 
with shyly-bent head. 

Miss Sylvia did not require many explanations. 
She liked Mr. Hilliard, and thought it quite 
natural that he should have met Nora and es- 
corted her home. It was really quite early, 
though the night came so soon. Hilliard felt 
very comfortable when he had put off his damp 


THE FIRST S7EF. 


127 


overcoat in the hall, and had flung himself in an 
easy chair by the corner of the fire. He did not 
look the least bit in the world like a criminal as 
he sat there nursing Rags, and talking easily to 
Miss Carew. As for Nora, she was very silent, 
but more beautiful than ever, with the vivid crim- 
son of her cheeks, and her starry eyes shining un- 
der their long, curling lashes. She was only 
conscious of a vague, exquisite warmth while he 
remained. When he was gone there would be a 
sin against Jim to reckon with. Now her heart 
pushed away that intrusive thought with all its 
might. 

When Hilliard went Miss Carew was cordial in 
pressing him to return, and he had arranged for 
the ride the next day and some expeditions for 
the week following. Of Nora Miss Carew never 
thought, except to be glad the child was having 
a little pieasant life and society. Nora was an 
engaged girl, and in her aunt’s unsophisticated 
eyes was as good as married. She would never 
have dreamt of insulting her niece by the thought 
that she could be faithless to Jim Hurley. So 
the steps of Nora’s backsliding were made easy 
for her. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


THE PRIMROSE PATH. 

For the next month or so Nora lived between 
joy and despair, between a radiant intoxicating 
warmth, which made all the winter world bloom 
and sing, and a cold sickness that took her in 
quiet hours and filled her with a horrid repulsion 
for the man and herself and Jim and all the 
world. She thought of Jim now as the con- 
demned thinks of the executioner. Her sense of 
wrong toward him made her afraid. Sometimes 
in the night she would cover her face with her 
hands and fancy his stern face as he looked down 
at her and heard her trembling confession, and 
she would shake with cold terror. Then she 
would put away the thought of him with both 
hands, and turn to the memory of Hilliard that 
day, and the days that went before, of his kisses, 
of the ardour of his voice and eyes, of the turn of 
his head, of a thousand little tricks of movement 
and gesture which thrilled her to recall. She 
kept herself drugged with her love : always at 

128 


THE PRIMROSE PATH. 


129 


the back of it she felt unspeakably wicked — dis- 
proportionably wicked, a more sophisticated per- 
son would say. The passion in herself, and Hil- 
liard’s growing passion for her, repelled and 
frightened her, yet intoxicated her, too. Then 
the hiddenness of it frightened her. Nora was 
usually full of confidences to the people she was 
fond of. How often and how long she had chat- 
tered of Jim to Jessie Oliver and to her Aunt 
Sylvia ! But about this love, which she feared 
horribly, and yet feared more to have taken from 
her, she was as secret as a bird which builds its 
nest near the ground. She was ever alert lest 
suspicion should be awakened. It was part of 
her physical weakness that she should feel so 
desperately afraid even of those who could have 
no possible right to interfere with her. In these 
days she grew so clever in dissimulation that no 
one suspected her, and as Hilliard’s passion grew, 
she had to be careful for two. 

There was the first time they met after the epi- 
sode of the kiss. It was a couple of days later, 
and the Oliver girls were taking Hilliard to ex- 
plore a big house of the neighbourhood. Lord 
Westsea’s mansion, which was full of beautiful 
things covered up in holland swathings from the 


130 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


light of day. Lord Westsea’s father had been a 
famous collector, and the bulk of his treasures 
were lodged in Caracon Castle, but his heir pre- 
ferred Piccadilly, and was long in ranging himself 
by matrimony. For a couple of weeks in the 
year he filled Caracon with gay bachelors like 
himself, but the rest of the year it was given over 
to Mrs. Bennett, the housekeeper, and her dam- 
sels, and the great reception rooms were dark 
and silent. 

The Olivers knew every inch of the house as 
thoroughly as they knew their own. They were 
free to come and go in it as they liked, and Mrs. 
Bennett never troubled to drag her old bones up 
the wide stairs when the young ladies from Cro- 
martin were showing their company through the 
house. It was one of the few entertainments the 
neighbourhood afforded for the Olivers’ stray 
town visitors, and the girls derived considerable 
enjoyment from showing off Lord Westsea’s 
treasures, drawing up the blinds to let in day- 
light on the rich, dim rooms, whisking the covers 
from the pictures, lifting a corner of a holland bag 
to display the rose and azure tendrils of a Vene- 
tian chandelier, displaying the priceless china, the 
old silver, the wonderful glass old Lord Westsea 


THE PRIMROSE PATH. 13 1 

had ransacked the world for. There is a more 
subtle pleasure in being the guide than the per- 
son guided, and the girls always felt their impor- 
tance. Great was the moment to each of them 
when they led the sated visitor into a dim alcove 
of the shrouded drawing room, and, letting in the 
light, displayed the Raphael, the wonder of radi- 
ant and heavenly maternity, before which the 
most sceptical might bend the knee. There, year 
after year, Mother and Babe bloomed in that 
hidden recess. There was a way of lighting it 
from the side invisibly, and when Caracon was 
open and gaiety sparkled from morning till night, 
the unveiled picture was screened away from the 
revelers by heavy curtains, within which you felt 
as in a church. Under those eyes, deep with 
maternity, and those hands which held the bles- 
sed Babe between earth and heaven, nineteenth 
century gossip and amusements would be wofully 
out of place, so Lord Westsea had consulted his 
friends’ comfort as well as his own sense of the 
fitness of things in screening the picture away. 

Nora had not been included in the plan for vis- 
iting Caracon, but it was easy for Hilliard to put 
the idea in Jessie’s mind that she should be in- 
cluded. Jessie thought, indeed, that the sugges- 


132 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


tion came from herself. The House by the Mill 
was somewhat out of the way, but the afternoon 
was yet early when they started. Nora was 
mourning in her room when they arrived, but 
Mary, who had always keen sympathy for her 
young mistress’ moods, brought her the news in 
elephantine leaps up the creaking stairs. 

“ Ask them to sit in the parlour till I come to 
them,” said Nora, all in a trembling commotion. 
Her aunt was away at her weekly duty of dressing 
the altar in Coolevara chapel, and Nora had been 
sitting with her hands before her, going over for 
the thousandth time every word Hilliard had 
said the preceding evening, and trembling over 
again as she remembered his kiss. 

She came downstairs very shyly and coldly out 
of her dreams. Hilliard looked at her, and mis- 
understood her. Ah ! ” he said, “ the little lady 
has not forgiven me for forgetting myself last 
night, and I am a confounded fool ! ” When 
they got outside he walked ahead with May, and 
Nora and Jessie were left behind. He was fond 
of his young cousins almost equally, though he 
shared thoughts with the keener-witted Jessie he 
would never lay bare to May. May was very like 
her mother, and he appreciated her softness, her 


THE PRIMROSE PATH. 


133 


dignity, her clear sense of duty, and the virginal 
austerity that seemed to him an admirable thing 
in a young girl. She would never make a man 
forget himself like the little girl who had been so 
warm last night and was so cold to-day, but she 
would be a tender wife and mother, an admirable 
house-mistress, an honest friend, an open-handed 
dispenser of bounties. Her way in the world 
would be quite straight, if a little narrow, but 
over the bounds her feet would never desire to 
stray. He talked with a cheerful, brotherly fond- 
ness as they walked along, while, a little way be- 
hind, Nora wondered what they were talking of, 
and let the unconscious Jessie chatter for once to 
closed ears. 

She felt a little cold over his self-possessed 
greeting of her, and his easy passing to May’s 
side. Still she thought to herself that he could 
not well have left the sisters to walk together, 
and a timid hope sprang up in her heart that 
things would be all right when they reached the 
castle, and that he would look at her and speak to 
her in a way that would show he had not forgot- 
ten last night. He had seemed so fond of her 
then, and so grateful for the comfort she had 
given him, and he had spoken to her of himself 


134 THE IVAY OF A MAID. 

and his troubles in a way she was quite, quite 
sure he had never spoken to the cousins he had 
known all his life. Alas! poor Nora! He 
seemed to have no more desire for her society 
when they had arrived at Caracon than before. 
He strolled lazily by May’s side through the 
long rooms and corridors. He inspected the 
pictures and curios with the interest of an 
expert, and really enjoyed his sight-seeing. The 
Oliver girls were delighted with him, for he not 
only appreciated their entertainment, but he 
brought out easily from his knowledge enter- 
tainment for them. They were shamefully 
ignorant of Limoges and Battersea enamels. 
They knew nothing at all about the periods of 
china and its marks; very little of Diirer or 
Mantegna points. Nora, too, was drawn in to 
listen, but the talk of things she did not under- 
stand served to push her farther into the 
darkness and coldness which were gathering 
about her heart. Jessie rallied her on her 
silence, and then got pitiful. She took one of 
Nora’s little cold hands and squeezed it warmly. 
This was when they were standing before the 
Madonna, and the little alcove was a glory of light 
and warmth to frame that immortal beauty. 


THE PRIMROSE PATH. 


135 


The everlasting eyes but made the girls heart 
feel colder with the vague sense of shame and 
guilt that was pressing on it. After they had 
turned away from the Raphael and locked the 
dark drawing-room, she dropped down on a 
window-seat in the corridor. 

“ Do you go on,” she pleaded to her friend, 
“ and let me rest till you come back. I am tired. 
I can’t go on.” 

“ You poor little thing ! ” said Jessie, putting a 
strong young arm round her ; “ have we been 
half killing you ? No, indeed, I won’t leave you 
to the hobgoblins in this great lonely corridor. 
Besides I know the house by heart.” 

Hilliard looked back indifferently and then 
strolled on by May’s side. Poor little Nora! if 
she could have only felt angry against him, but 
she was too depressed and mortified for anger. 
She tried to pluck up a little bit of spirit when 
he had gone, but unsuccessfully. Jessie kept 
her arm round her fondly, and was full of re- 
pentance for having over-tired her friend. Pres- 
ently the other two came back, and after they 
had locked up, they went down to a warm cup of 
tea by Mrs. Bennett’s fire. Nora, in her dim 
corner, kept her eyes on her lap, but was very 


136 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


conscious of Hilliard’s sitting on the arm of 
May’s chair, and attending to her wants assidu- 
ously. Once or twice he came to Nora’s corner, 
helping her to things, which she took in a little 
frozen way. He stooped once and asked if she 
was very tired ; he felt vaguely tender to her 
dimmed beauty, for unhappiness did not sit well 
on Nora. But she answered him in a voice 
which the effort to keep steady had made 
formal, and with a surer conviction that her 
coldness was meant to punish him he went back 
to May and his affectionate care of her. 

On the homeward way he walked with Jessie 
and left Nora and May together. May never 
troubled Nora to talk much ; there was not very 
much sympathy between them, and she was not 
painfully anxious over her companion’s dumps 
as Jessie would have been. She concluded Nora 
had found the afternoon dull, and was too 
indolent not to show it. Codger scampered by 
them, making incursions into every coppice after 
sparrows, squirrels, rabbits, or whatever else he 
saw moving or heard rustling. The dog made a 
little conversation for them as dogs always do, 
and they got briskly over the frozen ground. 
When they reached the gate, at the foot of the 


THE PRIMROSE PATH. 


137 


winding ascent to . the House by the Mill, they 
found Jessie and Hilliard waiting to bid Nora 
good-bye. 

“Can you not come in?” Nora faltered with 
a sick sense of the finality of this afternoon’s 
miserable events. 

“No, Noreen darling, we can’t,” replied Jes- 
sie ; “ we’ll only just be home in time for dinner, 
and our rector and his wife are coming this even- 
ing. You won’t be afraid, dear, going up there, 
through those dark trees ? ” 

“ Oh, no,” said Nora, with a wan smile, “ I am 
never afraid.” 

She gave them each a little cold hand of 
farewell, not lifting her eyes to Hilliard as she 
came to him. Then she turned and went 
quickly up the climbing road. She was glad to 
be alone, and after a minute or two she slack- 
ened her pace and let the heavy tears of mortifi- 
cation and disappointment come into her eyes > 
hot and stinging they were after this long 
repression. She felt it a great relief to be alone, 
and she had a dread of going in to her aunt, and 
having to answer questions; she wished the 
evening were well over, and that she was safe in 
her own little room with no eye upon her. 


138 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

Suddenly the sound of a man’s feet running 
brought her heart into her mouth. She was not 
startled in the ordinary way. So far as mortals 
were concerned Nora would walk the glen alone 
at midnight, but she knew at once it was 
Hilliard, and her heart began to beat wildly, 
while she tried to brush away her tears, and to 
smooth her face to a conventional expression. 
He began a lame explanation as he came up to 
her, but his voice suddenly altered. He caught 
at her hands. 

‘‘No,” he said, “I won’t trump up an excuse 
for you, though I’ve had to do it for my fair 
cousins, whom I’ve left waiting for me. I’ve 
come back to ask — to ask whether you’ve found 
this afternoon as deadly dull and disappointing as 
I have.” 

He bent down to her face, but Nora suddenly 
covered her eyes with both hands and sobbed 
with a violence that was half relief after the strain 
of the last few miserable hours. 

“ Don’t, child!” he said, putting his arm about 
her. “ Don’t cry, dear, dear little girl. You are 
not crying for a wretched fellow like me, surely?” 

Nora whispered through her tears: “Go, your 
cousins will be waiting for you. And, indeed, 


THE PRIMROSE PATH. 


139 


you ought not to be with me at all, nor to put 
your arm round me. It isn’t right.” 

“ Not right, sweet,” he said, half laughing. “ It 
wouldn’t be right if I did not. But I must go, as 
you say. There is no time for our explanation, 
and my cousins will think I have stayed inor- 
dinately long already. But I must see you, if 
only to find out whether you mean to banish me. 
Will you take your walk to-morrow by the 
Fairies’ Waterfall ? I know it is a favourite haunt 
of yours, and I, too, have found my way there. 
Will you, will you ? ” he asked eagerly. 

“ Oh, no ! ” faltered Nora, “ I’m sure I must not.” 

He looked down into the face that was drooped 
like flower heavy with rain. 

“ Very well,” he said, “ don’t promise. But I 
shall be there. And now give me a kiss so that 
the afternoon may at least end sweetly.” 

He lifted her face by the chin and kissed her 
tender mouth with an ardour that amazed himself. 
Then he put her out of his arms by force, as it 
would seem, and in a minute or two the echoes of 
his running feet on the shining ground died away. 
Nora stood where he left her with her hands 
clasped on her breast and her mind and heart in a 
tremor, out of which no definite thought could 


140 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

come. She stood so for several minutes, while 
the frosty moon smiled out in the sky. She felt 
no cold. Her cheeks burned, and her lips yet 
felt those passionate kisses. She went in absent- 
mindedly, and went slowly upstairs to take off her 
outdoor things. When she had lit her candles, 
she sat down with her chin on her hand and 
looked at herself in the glass. There was not a 
vein in her body that was not pulsing with ex- 
quisite life. She tried to look at her face in an 
impersonal way, to see herself as he had seen her. 
Then she laughed with pleasure as the glow of 
her beauty softly rose in the glass. She leant 
and kissed herself, and the chill contact of her 
lips with the glass startled her. 

There came a knock at the door. It was Mary 
with a message. ^‘Your aunt says, miss, are you 
ready for your tea?” Nora answered her in a 
voice she had to keep low and deliberate, lest the 
joy in it should be too manifest. She knew she 
would see to-morrow the man who had so sud- 
denly captivated her imagination. She knew that 
she would probably have many alternations of 
feeling betwixt to-night and to-morrow, but in the 
end she had no doubt her walk would lead her by 
the Fairies’ Waterfall. She fastened a few bright 


THE PRIMROSE PATH. 141 

berries in her dress and went downstairs softly- 
singing. She gave her father and her aunt quite 
an animated account of Cardcon and its treasures. 
All that evening she was gentler and more 
caressing than usual. 

Nora was a creature of one mood for the time 
being. It was part of her childishness. That 
evening she gave herself up to joy, and pushed 
into the very farthest corner of her mind the 
thought of Jim and the wrong she was doing him. 
Perhaps the sense that she had no right to her 
joy made it, in a manner, more exquisite, because 
there is always a flavour about the forbidden fruit 
that the lawful misses. 

The night post was brought by Lanty Daly at 
nine o’clock. Lanty was a red-haired, freckled 
urchin who went messages and did odd jobs for 
the House by the Mill, a boy who had an incredi- 
ble talent for “ witching.” Everything on the 
way distracted him, and he went a bit of the road 
with every friend he met. To-night he was punc- 
tual for once, but Nora could have forgiven him 
for playing truant. There was only one letter, 
and that one with the familiar Indian stamp, for 
herself. The sight of it pricked the airy bubble 
of her dreams. She took it from Mary, who had 


142 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

good-naturedly, and with prodigious excitement, 
come running up the stairs with it, and put it 
into her pocket. Then she kissed her aunt, and, 
saying she was tired, took her candle and went 
upstairs. 

Miss Carew thought she understood that the 
child wanted to read her love letter by herself. 
She lifted up the clustering rings of hair from 
Nora’s forehead, and kissed it with a love and 
tenderness that made the kiss a blessing. Poor 
Nora, her aunt knew little how that letter had 
set the still small voice whispering in her 
heart ! 

Upstairs, Nora placed the letter on a little 
table, where it lay prominently white in the 
candlelight. She was in no hurry to read it, and 
she wished vainly that Lanty had not been so 
punctual, so that the letter might have stood over 
till morning. She was afraid of it. It seemed to 
her like accuser and judge in one. Very slowly 
she put on her warm dressing-gown, and thrust 
her feet into her wadded slippers. Then she took 
her letter gingerly and opened it. 

It was such a letter as she had many of from 
him, a quiet, manly, tender letter, more like a 
man’s letter to his wife than to his sweetheart. 


THE PRIMROSE PATH. 


143 


Jim Hurley had never been a very demonstrative 
lover, and he had no conception at all of the 
passionate heart of his little mistress, which, in- 
deed, he had never been able to waken. But 
Nora knew well that his was an honest, faithful 
love, on which a woman might lean securely all 
her life. The other man meant all kinds of ro- 
mance to her — such romance as she had read of 
in books, but never thought of as coming to or- 
dinary human folk, and, least of all, to her hum- 
drum corner of the world. The story of his long 
faithfulness to the dead woman had captivated 
her fancy before she had seen him. Then his 
manner to herself was so alluring that she felt 
actually as if he were drawing her heart from her. 
If she had never known anything but Jim’s quiet 
love and her own affection for and belief in him, 
she felt she would have lost something that for 
the time gave her mortality wings. She thought 
of Hilliard reading poetry; 

“ Is this the face that launched a thousand ships ? ” 

Why, there had been as great a passion in his 
voice this evening when he spoke to her as 
though she had been that wonderful woman in 
the poem ! 


144 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

She read the letter through conscientiously, 
and then put it down. She sighed for the peace 
of her tenderness toward Jim, which she had 
taken to be love. There was no peace in this 
new feeling, which was half love, half hate, or 
at least repulsion. 

She put the letter away carefully with its 
fellows, and prepared to go to bed. She felt 
both cold and wretched after reading her lover’s 
unsuspicious letter. Just as she was getting into 
bed she heard a tiny scratching at the door. It 
was Rags, and she took him in and into her 
arms, putting her face down on his little yellow 
back. The puppy seemed to understand she 
was troubled and wriggled round to lick her face. 
Nora kissed him and put him outside her door; 
then she crept into bed, and lay staring before 
her at the dim rosy light she kept burning on 
her little altar. 

She said her prayers, praying as usual that she 
might be good and wise for Jim. How often she 
had fallen asleep with his letter in her hand. To- 
night she whispered her prayers hurriedly and 
without heart. She felt she had no right to her 
prayers with that meeting of to-morrow before 
her. She ought to pray, she knew, for strength 


THE PRIMROSE PA TH. 


145 


to resist this temptation, but she would not 
pray, fearing least she should be heard. After 
to-morrow she would be faithful, she resolved, 
and would pray hard, and would not see Mr. 
Hilliard any more. And some time she would 
tell Jim, when they were married and she had 
made him happy and sure of her. She would 
tell him it was only a temptation, and that she 
had put it away, and had never really loved any- 
one but him. This thought came to her after 
two or three hours of restlessness, and she fell 
asleep, feeling quite virtuous. To-morrow she 
would say good-bye to Mr. Hilliard forever, 
would tell him he must go back to London and 
forget her, and she would forget him. The 
pathos of their parting made her lashes wet as 
she slept. 

Of course they met on the morrow, and Nora 
tried to be very dignified and resolute with him. 
He was not at all without conscience as regarded 
her. He had indeed been calling himself a 
scoundrel at intervals since yesterday evening. 
Yet he was not quite prepared to make this their 
last meeting. 

I know you are right,” he said, and we have 
both been very naughty, though it is all my fault. 


146 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

But let me down easily. Don’t forbid me to see 
you while I stay, which cannot be much longer. 
The other man will have you all his life. Give 
me my hour.” 

Of course Nora gave him his hour, and really 
felt quite purged of her fault when she tied him 
up severely, forbidding him even to kiss her 
hands or to hold them. Poor little Nora! it 
was hard to be angry with her. St. Edmund 
Hilliard had fascinated many women, though 
none had fascinated him since his dead Helen. 
And now he was putting himself at the feet 
of a little country girl with only her beauty 
and dawning passion for himself to recommend 
her. 

Don’t be hard on me,” he pleaded. “You 
have made me care to be with you and 
to see you, and you are the only woman 
since ” 

He strolled homeward by the river with her, 
and behaved admirably. He talked to her about 
himself and his life, with a quiet and tender con- 
fidence that had nothing in it to frighten her. 
He was so good and careful that the kiss at part- 
ing seemed only a part of their friendship. Nora 
felt she was safe now in not forbidding him her 


THE PRIMROSE PATH. 


147 


presence, especially as he had said such things 
about the comfort she was to him, and the boon 
a good woman’s friendship is to a man. How 
many men have so deluded themselves and 
women since the world began. 


CHAPTER IX. 


THE WORLD AND THE CLOISTER. 

The year turned round to Christmas, and still 
Hilliard lingered at Cromartin. The Olivers 
were the most hospitable people, and were only 
too pleased that he should stay, and flattered, 
too, since he preferred them to all the London 
gaieties. He was constantly making resolutions 
to go, and then allowing himself to be persuaded 
to stay. He was a most pleasant visitor — never 
in the way when he wasn’t wanted ; always ready 
to be pleased at their small amusements ; so ten- 
derly courteous and considerate to Mrs. Oliver 
and her daughters, that the lamentations were 
quite genuine when he seriously spoke of de- 
parting. To do him justice, he had several times 
resolved to go, to take himself out of the way of 
temptation, and leave the little girl to her lawful 
allegiance. When he was away from Nora, and 
in cold blood looked at the situation, he con- 
founded himself for a fool and a scoundrel. He 
realised that she was not of his class, and in those 


THE WORLD AND THE CLOISTER. 149 

early days never thought of anything so wild as 
marrying her. In his treatment of her there was 
no deliberate cowardice or cruelty. It was simply 
that when he was with her she allured him out 
of his good resolutions ; the look in her eyes as 
she lifted them to him went to his head like 
wine. He put away the suggestion of his con- 
science, that he was behaving badly to that un- 
known man in India. He thought of him with 
a half-conscious contempt, as not of his class. 

“ D n the fellow ! ’’ he said, “ he can't care for 

the sweet little girl, or he'd pitch his scientific 
investigations to the devil, and come home and 
marry her." 

There were many times when Nora, too, could 
have wished for less scientific fervour in her 
lover ; times when all her heart rose in rebellion 
against the man who was her unauthorised lover ; 
times when she hated the passion she had in- 
spired in him, as every girl hates and fears a man's 
passion in early days, when it is but dimly com- 
prehended. There were times when her mem- 
ories of Jim's strong, kindly love were as of 
something sane and clean and wholesome by the 
side of the tumult of Hilliard’s feeling for her. 
In a way her revulsions of feeling against him 


ISO THE WAY OF A MAID. 

held Hilliard as no steady glow would have done. 
There was something piquant in the coldness of a 
girl, who, a few hours before, had been warm and 
trembling. There were times when he came to 
the House at the Mill, and while he remained, the 
little chatelaine sat stiffly in her arm-chair, and 
refused to come from behind her entrenchments 
of silence and coldness. Nora’s moods helped 
to conceal the state of things from the outside 
world. Once she even rose and went out of the 
room during his visit, and came back no more. 
If he had but known she was crying upstairs 
over Jim’s picture ! Miss Carew apologised for 
her gently, when Hilliard rose to go, after wait- 
ing as long as he could, decently. “You must 
excuse my niece,” she said, “ she is not very 
strong, and we indulge her greatly.” 

As he buttoned his coat, going out in the 
frosty night, he had almost resolved never to 
come back, but the temptation of seeing that 
little icy face soften and burn for him was too 
much. The very next evening there was a re- 
conciliation. Hilliard knew where to wait for her 
on her afternoon walks, and he had grown fond 
of taking his gun and going out after lunch, so 
that his absences were not noticed at Cromartin. 


THE WORLD AND THE CLOISTER. 15 1 

When he came striding to meet Nora over the 
bracken, she was in a mood to make up with him. 
That evening she let him put his arms round her, 
and kiss her, and reproach her as he would. 
After the reconciliation they walked along the 
dusky road, hand in hand, quite at peace with 
the world and each other. Such times were best 
of all. 

Christmas Day came, and the Olivers’ break- 
fast table was heaped with many parcels. 
Hilliard’s gifts were just what each one wanted, 
for had he not been industriously, for some time 
before, seeking to discover what should best 
please his dear cousins? For Mrs. Oliver there 
was a set of Ruskin in purple morocco. For 
May a sable muff, for Jessie a scarlet leather 
writing-case. Mr. Oliver’s new pigskin saddle of 
the most improved make was a delightful sur- 
prise, and was, indeed, much needed. It gave 
Hilliard great pleasure to hear the shrieks of 
delight with which the girls discovered their 
gifts. Mr. Oliver was affectionately severe. 

“ Dear boy,” he said, “your gifts are too munifi- 
cent. I don’t feel quite happy in accepting 
mine, at all events.” 

“ They are nothing, nothing at all,” protested 


152 


THE IVA Y OF A MAID. 


Hilliard; ^‘and it is sweet for a lonely man 
to have kind cousins to receive his unworthy 
offerings.” 

In the afternoon he begged Jessie’s company 
for a walk. May was too busy with her Christ- 
mas cards and parcels to go with them. It 
was a bright December afternoon of pale sun- 
shine, and the frosty road sparkled under their 
feet as they walked. Hilliard had asked for 
Jessie’s company with a design, for yesterday 
Nora had refused to arrange any meeting with 
him. She had promised to visit Mary Hurley 
at the convent which she had entered some 
weeks ago. Hilliard had acquiesced to her go- 
ing, but with a vague jealousy of the Hurley 
connection. But to-day he wanted especially to 
see Nora, and it was useless to look for a walk 
alone with her, when Coolevara folk were out 
in holiday attire. The roads, so quiet of an 
ordinary afternoon, were on Sundays and such 
high festivals as this thronged with the towns- 
people. 

They walked quite naturally toward the glen ; 
it was the favourite walk of the neighbourhood. 
As Hilliard had suspected, Jessie soon suggested 
that they should go and see Nora. 


THE WORLD AND THE CLOISTER. 153 

“ I want to see the little mouse’s Christmas 
boxes, and tell her of mine.” And at the mem- 
ory of her scarlet writing-case, she squeezed 
Hilliard’s arm affectionately with her two 
hands. 

Don’t, Jess,” he said, laughing, “ or the people 
will think we’re courting.” Then he answered 
her suggestion, feeling something of a hypocrite : 
“ I thought I heard you say that Miss Halloran 
had some special en^gement for Christmas 
Day.” 

“ Oh, of course she has, poor old Nora ! ” said 
Jessie, to whom, indeed, Nora had written as 
much. “ She has to visit her future sister-in-law 
in the convent.” 

But at a turn of the road they came upon Nora, 
stepping westward ” briskly, with the scarlet of 
the waning sun lighting her hair and eyes, and a 
delightful colour in her cheeks. Jessie gave her 
an enthusiastic greeting. Nora had blushed furi- 
ously when she saw her, but the blush excited no 
suspicion in Jessie’s mind. She knew girls who 
blushed at being spoken to, or at meeting the 
merest acquaintances, and she put the embarrass- 
ment down to the account of Nora’s youthfulness. 
Actually they were nearly of an age, but theo- 


154 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


retically she looked upon Nora as a score of years 
her junior. 

'‘Well, Noreen,” she said, “are you going to 
your convent ? How I wish you could take me ! 
I have never been inside a convent, and I should 
like to see that pretty Miss Hurley in a nun’s 
dress.” 

Jessie had no idea of being taken at her word, 
but Hilliard caught at the suggestion. 

“ Would you take us. Miss Halloran?” he said. 
“ The convent is as mysterious a place to me, 
though less alarming, as to the most orthodox 
Protestant that ever illumined Exeter Hall.” 

He was watching Nora’s face, suffused with a 
lovely shy colour. She stammered and hesitated, 
but Jessie broke in: 

“ Oh, no, we couldn’t — at least I couldn’t ! 
Mother would faint, perhaps, at the idea, though 
father wouldn’t mind a bit. Father knows the 
nuns well, and has a tremendous admiration for 
Sister Agatha, who, he says, is the best man of 
business in the county. He ought to know, for 
he buys her calves every year. Mother doesn’t 
believe in escaped nuns, you know, but she would 
think it a tremendous departure for me to visit a 
convent.” 


THE WORLD AND THE CLOISTER. 155 

“ Fm afraid Miss Halloran won’t take me 
alone?” said Hilliard, scrutinising Nora’s chang- 
ing face. 

“Oh, I daren’t !” said Nora, laughing. “The 
nuns would think it too advanced of me.” 

Hilliard turned to his cousin. “ Come, Jessie,” 
he said, “ Fll take all the blame. But didn’t 
Carrie visit this very convent when she was stay- 
ing here ? I know she brought back some lace 
she had bought at a convent.” 

“So she did,” said Jessie. “Father brought 
her to see their lace-making. The nuns give him 
a great many wrinkles about the cottage indus- 
tries he’s so keen upon. But mother thinks father 
can do no wrong. What would be right in him 
would be revolutionary in me, and she already 
thinks me too revolutionary.” 

However, Jessie did want very much to see the 
inside of a convent, and she was finally persuaded 
to make the expedition, justifying herself by the 
argument that what was right in her father could 
not be very wrong in her. 

The convent was a pretty structure of gray 
stone, with Gothic windows filled in with diamond 
panes, and a wide oak door, at which the visitors 
rang loudly. The gray walls were almost hidden 


156 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


by rose trees and many creeping plants, and in 
this sheltered place there was still a bloom of 
pale, late roses. Presently they heard the rustle 
of a robe, and, after an inspection through 
a grating, the door was opened by an apple- 
faced lay sister, who gave Nora the warmest of 
greetings, for was not Nora a child of the 
house ? 

The hall ran at right angles to a corridor, lined 
with brown wood, and dim, since the low sun came 
through coloured windows. Opposite to them 
was a statue in a niche, with flowers, and a little 
rosy light burning before it. The lay sister, hold- 
ing Nora’s hand tightly, ushered them into a 
high, bare parlour, which the wood fire made 
cheerful. The lower part of the walls was pan- 
elled, but above, on the whitewash, there were 
some pictures of saints. A big crucifix was over 
the mantelpiece, and in a cupboard with glass 
doors there were scapulars, rosaries, holy water 
fonts, and little statuettes of the saints. The 
floor was of brown wood polished to glassiness. 
The horse-hair chairs stood at regular intervals 
around the wall. There was nothing of redun- 
dance, nothing for luxury ; but the high bright 
room smelt of cleanliness. 


THE WORLD AND THE CLOISTER. 157 

Hilliard was still staring about him when the 
door opened, and Mother St. Vincent, the Rever- 
end Mother of Star of the Sea, came in, leading 
her girl postulant by the hand. Mary Hurley had 
a close-fitting black cap on her luxuriant hair, and 
a veil of some silky material floated from it about 
her shoulders. Her dress was an ordinary black 
gown of the poorest make, but she looked more 
radiant than any bride, and her happiness seemed 
to float with her like an atmosphere. 

Mother St. Vincent was very tall, and the trail- 
ing black robes seemed to make her taller. Her 
face was the most statuesque Hilliard had ever 
seen, and its beauty was so perfect as to be almost 
cold. Her mouth was very tender in its expres- 
sion, and on her face brooded the rapt look of 
peace and purity which is the inheritance of every 
nun. The warm whiteness of her face shone out 
radiantly from its environment of starched linen 
and dull black serge. She had been a great lady 
in the world, but she had never looked more 
stately than in her strait nun’s habit, with her 
brass crucifix, her rosary, and the gold ring of her 
mystic espousals for all ornament. 

Hilliard was fascinated by her. When she had 
greeted the two girls with benignant motherli- 


158 THE WA Y OF A MAID. 

ness, she sat by him and talked to him of the 
world outside, leaving her young postulant to 
talk to her contemporaries. Mother St. Vincent, 
like every nun, was right glad to catch echoes 
from the world she had left. She only read just 
so much as was necessary, but she was very glad 
when anyone came her way who could tell her of 
the movements of the best part of the world 
which she had once adorned, of how things wagged 
in art and literature, politics and science. Hilliard 
found himself talking to her quite without awe, 
and telling her the last news of London as he 
might some gracious woman of the world, who 
had been travelling in regions inaccessible to 
newspapers. It was strange to find anyone so 
ready of intellect, so eagerly interested, whose 
knowledge had yet stopped at a dozen years ago. 
She plied him with questions for quite a long 
time, till at last he said laughingly : 

But I can never tell you half what you want 
to know. I must come again, Mother St. Vincent, 
if I may.” 

Pray, do! ” said the nun. 

Just then there was a little tinkle somewhere 
inside the convent. Mary Hurley started and 
listened, then looked at her superior. 


THE WORLD AND THE CLOISTER. 159 

“Yes; go, child!” said Mother St. Vincent. 
“ That is your bell.” 

After the young postulant had left them, a lay 
sister brought delicious coffee and rolls. Jessie 
told her family afterward that the room, with the 
fragrance of the coffee, smelt sweeter than a bed 
of violets. Anyhow, Sister Gabrielle’s coffee was 
exceedingly good. 

After they had taken their coffee the Reverend 
Mother said : “ If you would like to see our 

Christmas tree I can take you through the school 
quarters, but much of the house is enclosed, that 
is, none but the religious can enter it. It is all 
very familiar to you, Nora, dear child, but per- 
haps Mr. Hilliard and Miss Oliver would like to 
penetrate so far.” 

Mr. Hilliard and Miss Oliver did like very 
much. In fact, both felt quite agreeably excited. 
They went along the dusky corridor, seeing in 
the distance a white veil or a black veil that 
glided out of their path. The corridor ran round 
a tiny cloister, and now the full moon was up they 
could see the square grass plots and the rose 
bushes that tapped against the windows. 

They went up a broad flight of stairs to the 
schoolroom, which bore a festal air. At one end 


l6o THE WAY OF A MAID. 

red curtains screened off a stage, for the week 
after Christmas was to be occupied with plays, 
charades, and concerts. At the other end stood 
a Christmas tree, with a little German angel at 
the top blowing a trumpet, and looking down 
upon all the pretty and useful things that would 
be balloted for to-morrow. In the middle of the 
room, between two long rows of desks, there was 
a group of schoolgirls, all in black, and wearing 
variously-coloured ribbons with medals round 
their shoulders. They were surrounding a poor 
woman and child, and a rather shame-faced man 
who stood awkwardly with his cap in his hand, 
and looked at the ground. 

“ We have interrupted a little ceremony,” said 
Mother St. Vincent, pausing at the door. “ We 
dress a poor family every year in honour of the 
Holy Family.” 

The two heretics looked on with awe. The 
girls in the group were visibly fluttered, and 
broke into nervous schoolgirl tittering when 
Codger, who had accompanied the party, burst 
into their ring. Jessie had a chase to recapture 
him, and when that was achieved they followed 
Mother St. Vincent downstairs again. 

“ You must bring Miss Oliver and Mr. Hilliard 


THE WORLD AND THE CLOISTER, i6i 

again, Nora/' said Mother St. Vincent. “ I 
should like them to see the industrial school and 
the lacemakers and embroiderers at work. Mean- 
while,” — they had reached the parlour door and 
she had opened it for them, — “ I will take Mr. 
Hilliard to see the Titian in our chapel, and Sister 
Mary has come down to say good-bye ! I think 
some of your friends are waiting to see you too, 
Nora.” 

Through the open door Hilliard caught a 
glimpse of many black and white veils. Then 
she brought him to the lighted chapel to see the 
great picture which was part of her convent 
dowry. Hilliard examined and admired it, and 
by the time they returned the Angelus bell was 
ringing; it was six o’clock. The Reverend 
Mother stood in the corridor and crossed herself, 
and during the little space she remained in 
prayer Hilliard watched her with grave sympathy. 
There seemed to him a poetry in the hush and 
dim lights of the convent, in the black robe and 
white beauty of the nun beside which the outside 
world seemed garish. When they had reached 
the parlour door the Reverend Mother opened it, 
and he saw the two girls emerge from the embraces 
of many black veils and gowns. There was a de- 


i 62 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


lightful, low flutter of laughter going on amid 
those mysterious hidden woman. 

When they turned from the doorstep Jessie ex- 
plained : I wish you could have been with us, 
St. Edmund, though I suppose the young nuns 
wouldn’t have come down in their numbers if you 
had been. When they knelt to say the Angelus 
as the bell rang. Codger thought it was a new 
game and started to jumping upon them. You 
should see the poor nuns striving to keep their 
countenances, with indifferent success. That 
hilarious-looking young one you called Sister 
Cecilia, Nora, went off in irrepressible shrieks. 
What children your nuns are, Nora?” 

“ Oh, yes ! ” acquiesced Nora ; “ they used even 
to enjoy things at which we schoolgirls professed 
to turn up our noses. Poor little Cecilia could 
never keep her face in class when we impudently 
made jokes, though she might be really concerned 
at our malpractices.” 

“ Happy nuns ! ” sighed the world-worn Jessie. 
“ I suppose it is the merry spirit keeps your Sis- 
ter Cecilia her rose and white skin, and her soft 
red lips and tiny white teeth. I have never seen 
such white teeth except Codger’s.” 

“ Nuns never grow old,” said Nora. “At least 


THE WORLD AND THE CLOISTER. i6^ 

they are quite old women before they lose their 
youthful look.” 

The lights of the town glittered through the 
frosty twilight, little warm specks of gold by con- 
trast with the silver Lady Morn who sailed in 
high heaven. The contrast reminded Hilliard 
vaguely of the difference between hearth and 
cloister. The earth lights were lower and less 
glorious — little dancing glow-worms below in the 
valley — but for the one who would choose the 
austere splendour in the heavens, how many 
would be drawn by the warm earth lights. 

They left Jessie at the gate of Cromartin. 

“Miss Halloran and I are going to break the 
record to the glen,” said Hilliard, “ but if I am a 
little late for dinner, Jessie, ask your mother to 
forgive me. Come, Miss Halloran, we must 
race for it!” and he took Nora’s hand, and raced 
with her laughing down the hill road. 

Jessie gazed after them, wondering. “ Dear 
me ! ” she said to herself, “ what a boy St. 
Edmund is growing ! I remember when we 
used to look upon him as such a very dignified 
person.” 

The two walked very briskly till they were in 
sight of the House by the Mill. As they drew 


164 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

near it they heard a distant clock strike half-past 
six. 

“You must leave me now,” said Nora, with 
her head drooping. “ You will have to run 
quickly and get to Cromartin in time for dinner.” 

“You have not wished me a happy Christ- 
mas,” he said, as he looked down at the bent 
head. Nora answered nothing, and he lifted her 
face by the chin and kissed her, first on the lips, 
then on both of her closed eyes, again on her 
little white neck just above the fur collar. 

He put his arm round her because she seemed 
so languid and inert. It gave him exquisite 
satisfaction to feel that her love for him so 
affected her. At the moment he felt that she 
was worth anything to him ; it came to him like 
a shock that he was feeling more for her than he 
had felt for the woman in whose grave he 
thought he had buried his heart. He took up 
one of her languid hands. There was a twisted 
bracelet on the wrist, of red rough gold, plainly 
of Eastern make. He was conscious of a jealous 
desire to remove it, but he controlled himself. 

“ Did this come to-day, little Nora? ” he asked. 

“Yes,” she said, opening her eyes in a startled 
way ; “ it is pretty, is it not ? ” 


THE WORLD AND THE CLOISTER. 165 

“No,” he said, “not pretty enough for you. 
I have something prettier. I waited till now to 
offer my Christmas gift.” 

He took a case from his pocket and handed it 
to her, hoping to see the delight in her eyes, and 
to hear her soft cry of pleasure. Nora opened 
the case. As she did something sparkled in the 
moon-rays, coldly brilliant with scarlet, green, and 
azure. It was a half-hoop diamond bracelet of 
great beauty and value. Hilliard, with affected 
carelessness, lit a cigarette while she gazed, in 
fascination he thought, at the shining gaud. He 
took two or three puffs ; still she said nothing. 
At last he broke silence. 

“ Well, little girl, are you going to thank me in 
the way I like best ? ” 

She lifted her eyes very slowly and looked 
at him. Her expression was entirely changed. 
She looked like Nora grown up, he thought to 
himself, half startled. She held the bracelet 
toward him still with that grave silent gaze. 

“ Take it,” she said, “ till you have answered 
me a question.” 

Hilliard took the bracelet awkwardly, and 
waited for what she might say. 


CHAPTER X. 


A QUESTION AND A RECALL. 

When Nora spoke there was something hard 
and distinct in her voice, a note of accusation 
that thrilled Hilliard with a sense of guilt. He 
would have stepped nearer to her but she waved 
him off with a quite strange imperativeness. 
What marvel had been wrought in the girl, who, 
a few moments ago, had been so helpless under 
his caresses ? 

“ I want you to tell me,” she said, with a 
pathetic dignity, “whether, if I were free to 
marry you, you would have asked me to be your 
wife.” 

Hilliard replied nothing. He seemed to 
realise for the first time the wrong he had done 
her, and how he had made her care for him and 
yield herself up to his kisses just for his own 
selfish pleasure. She stood looking at him in 
the moonlight, with all the tender childish curves 
of her face tense and rigid. 

i66 


A QUESTION AND A RECALL. 167 

“ Nora ! Nora! ” he said at last, stretching his 
hands to her. 

^‘Nol” she said, keeping him off. “Answer 
me, answer me 1 ” 

The man stammered and hesitated. She came 
quite close to him and looked in his ashamed 
face. Then she uttered a moan, as if he had 
hurt her. 

“ Oh, you would not ! ” she said. “You were 
only playing with me all the time.” 

Hilliard caught her in his arms, but she struck 
him with her small fist on the breast and 
wrenched herself from him. He sprang after 
her, and she turned and fled. In her flight and 
his pursuit there was an equal blindness and 
purposelessness. She wanted to get away from 
him and hide her hurt and lost self-respect ; he, 
with a half-rage against her, had a wild desire to 
kiss her and make her his again. 

The old mill buildings rose stark and ghastly, 
with the moonlight shining through the blank 
eyes of windows and the half-ruinous upper 
walls. Toward them Nora flew like a hare, 
scarcely knowing whither her feet were carrying 
her. The place was utterly silent, save for the 
lowing of the cattle in the cattle shed. The 


i68 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


men were by their own hearthstones this Christ- 
mas night, and old Michael Halloran was nod- 
ding by the fire opposite his sister-in-law, and 
wondering what could keep his little girl so late 
at the convent. 

Nora flew through the yard full of black 
shadows, which at other times would have 
terrified her. At the yawning door to the old 
mill she looked back over her shoulder. Hilliard 
was following her closely, calling as he came : 
“ For God’s sake, come back ! Nora ! Nora ! ” 
She did not hear him. She had only a wild 
horror and fear of him and his caresses. It was 
just as if she had stood at the edge of sin and 
looked down into its depths. Their intercourse 
had been absolutely innocent, except of dis- 
loyalty, but this passion to which she had 
yielded, a passion unsanctified and unlighted by 
any thought of marriage, seemed to burn and 
sear her like dishonour itself. What was her 
fear of the mill, of the death-traps in its broken 
floors and rotten ladders, compared to her fear 
of him. 

She disappeared through the black door before 
he could reach her. He followed, stumbling over 
rotten and shiny refuse, — once he swerved sud- 


A QUESTION AND A RECALL. 169 

% 

denly from the black mouth of an open well. In 
the darkness of the mill he could see nothing. 
He struck a match and peered about him. There 
was no sound in the place, and overhead he could 
see the rotten rafters showing great gaps in the 
floor above. His rage cooled down in an anguish 
of fear. Cold sweat came out on his forehead in 
drops. He went everywhere, calling her softly 
by name, striking matches to peer into dark 
corners. She was nowhere. 

At last he espied in a corner a green and 
rotten ladder, swinging by iron clamps from a 
square opening overhead. It was the way to the 
upper floor, and by that way she must have gone. 
He shuddered as he saw the broken rungs and 
the great distance to that black mouth, but it 
was of her he was thinking : he was not con- 
scious of any danger for himself. He shook the 
ladder and found that the clamps held. His 
athletic training stood him now to good purpose. 
He caught the sides of the ladder and went 
swinging himself up hand over hand, while the 
ladder swayed backward and forward. He felt 
with his feet for the steps which he scarcely 
dared touch, they were so rotten and moulder- 
ing. Presently his head was over the side, and 


170 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


he clambered into the great upper chamber. 
His matches were all gone, but it was light 
enough with the moonlight streaming through 
the broken-down roof and walls. In the dark he 
could have scarcely gone a step without falling 
through the floor to the abyss below. 

In the farthest, dimmest corner he found her, 
cowering with her hands over her face. 

My God ! ” he said to her, “ were you mad to 
endanger your life like this, or am I a wild beast, 
that you should escape me by such means? ” 

There was rage throbbing somewhere at the 
back of his head, but as yet he would not yield 
to it. When they were out of this infernal 
death-trap, as he called it, there would be time 
enough. 

She did not answer him, but cowered lower 
against the wall. 

“ Come, child,” he said gently, ^‘you need fear 
no further annoyance from me. I am a gentle- 
man, or used to be. Come ; it will need all your 

courage to get out of this d d place alive ! 

God knows how you ever got into it safely, or 
I either. Come ! ” he said again, in a stern voice 
of command. 

She stood up, looking pale and awe-stricken. 


A QUESTION AND A RECALL. 171 

He took her hand, noticing how deadly cold it 
was, and they crept cautiously, step by step, over 
the ruinous floor. Now and again their feet 
went half through the mouldering wood. 
Hilliard was wondering all the time how she 
would ever make the descent in the black pit 
below by the slippery and rotten ladder. She 
had come up with a greater fear driving her on, 
but it was another matter, cowed as she was, to 
trust herself to it as it swung in the pit of black- 
ness below the trap-door. He wondered if he 
could carry her down. No, he decided : the 
ladder would never bear under the double 
weight, and he would be hampered by having 
only one hand to use in the descent. 

They reached the trap-door, and as the girl 
caught sight of the way she must descend, she 
trembled violently. He put his arm round her 
with a rush of tenderness. Courage, darling,” 
he said ; “ I will take care of you,” — though at 
the moment he was sorely put to it as to how 
she was to make the descent. He looked round 
him helplessly. Suddenly, through the debris 
about the wall, he caught sight of a coil of rope. 
“Ah ! ” he said, with a deep sigh of satisfaction, 
drawing the girl back a safe distance from the 


172 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


pit. “Now God grant it be not hopelessly 
rotten!” he murmured to himself, stooping and 
lifting the coil. He unwound it along the floor. 
The outside strands were rotten with exposure 
to the weather, but on the protected side there 
was an honest length of quite sound and clean 
rope. He cut off the rotten part with his knife, 
feeling ready to shout with delight. “ Now, little 
Nora,” he said cheerfully, as he came to her, 
“ you shall teach me to thank your God for this 
exceeding mercy, when we get on terra jirma. 
And now courage, child, and trust to me and 
this good rope.” 

He knotted it round her waist and then 
around his own. Then he helped her over the 
edge of the trap-door, holding her hands while she 
got her feet on to the rung of the ladder. Her 
face was white in the moonlight, and her eyes 
unnaturally wide with fear ; but she obeyed him 
implicitly. While she held on to the lip of the 
door, he stretched himself on his face on the 
floor. He took her cold hands and let her down 
as far as his arms would reach. 

“ Now, darling,” he said, “take tight hold of 
the sides and don’t look down. Don’t move till 
I tell you,” 


A QUESTION AND A RECALL, 173 

He could see the tense little figure below him 
on the swaying, cracking ladder, and he thanked 
God again for the rope. 

He stood up and gathered the coils of it taut. 
“ Now go, darling,” he said, ‘‘ and don’t be afraid. 
Remember that you are quite safe. Sing out to 
me when you get down.” 

He felt the pull on the rope as she began to 
move, and he paid it out slowly, little by little. 
Once there was a sudden jerk, and he leant over 
with his heart in his mouth. He thought she had 
fallen off the ladder. She called up to him 
softly : “All right ! it was only a missing rung, and 
I have found the next.” After a pause she went 
on again, and presently her welcome call came 
through the dark to tell him she was safe. 

He untied the rope from his waist, and, calling 
to her to stand clear, dropped it over. For him 
the descent was easy enough, and he made it 
light-heartedly, knowing she was safe. She 
watched him come, almost sliding from rung to 
rung, and made no sound, though her knees were 
trembling, and there was a roar like the sea in 
her ears. As his feet touched solid earth he 
caught joyfully at her hand. 

“You brave little girl ! ” he said. “ What pluck 


174 


THE WA Y OF A MAID. 


you have ! Why, not one woman out of a hun- 
dred but would have fainted or screamed at the 
thought of plunging into that abyss.” 

“ This way !” she said, clinging to his hand. 
“At that side there is an uncovered well that 
goes deeper than anyone knows.” 

She had regained her self-possession. When 
they came out into safety again she looked proud 
and cold. A distant clock pealed seven as they 
left the mill yard behind them. She clasped her 
hands involuntarily. 

“ Oh,” she said, “ what will father and Aunt 
Sylvia be thinking ? And you, too ! Go, the 
Olivers must not know that you have been with 
me all this time.” 

A moment ago he had forgiven her for her wild 
freak and the fright she had given him. Now, at 
her icy voice, rage surged up anew in him. The 
reaction from fear often makes one cruel in re- 
sentment. He caught her in his arms and kissed 
her with violence. 

“ Indeed, madam,” he said. “ Do you think 
I will let you go so lightly after the fright you 
gave me? How dare you, how dare you terrify 
me like that ? Why, my God,” he said, with a 
hoarse sound like a sob, “ I could kill you for the 


A QUESTION AND A RECALL. 175 

fear you made me feel ! You have yet to learn, 
my little Nora, what a brute the civilised man 
can be.” 

He almost crushed her in his embrace, kissing 
hardly all the time the lips that tried to escape 
him. Then he let her go as suddenly as he had 
caught her and strode away over the frosty 
ground. 

Nora stood panting, trembling. She felt very 
cold, though her face was burning. She won- 
dered how she could ever face her father and her 
Aunt Sylvia after such indignities being offered 
to her. She clenched her hand in the direction 
Hilliard had taken. “How dare you!” she 
sobbed. “You know you would never have 
dared behave so to anyone but me. You think I 
am not a lady like your cousins. You and your 
diamond bracelet ! ” she sobbed, with a childish 
intensity. 

She waited a while till the appearance of com- 
posure came. Then she went into the house, 
and, perhaps to avoid scrutiny under the lamp- 
light, crept up to her father’s chair and softly 
rubbed her hair against his face. He woke up 
with a start. 

“ Why, where have you been, child ? ” he said. 


176 


THE WA Y OF A MAID. 


leaning forward to look at the clock. It’s no 
hour for you to be out of your own home. I 
thought you had come in long ago.” His voice 
was somewhat stern. 

I went to the convent,” said Nora, still rub- 
bing her curls to him, “and I met Mr. Hilliard 
and Jessie Oliver, and they came with me. And 
Mother St. Vincent was so kind to us, and they 
were so pleased, that we never noticed the time 
passing. We saw the Christmas tree and the 
schoolroom decked for the plays, and the poor 
people the children have dressed this Christmas, 
and we had such delightful coffee and rolls.” 

Nora talked on with the most placid fluency. 
From her timidity where blame was to be feared 
she had learnt to be a good actress. The events 
of the evening had shaken her, and she wanted 
above all things to get away where she could cry 
freely. Even now the hot gushes of tears were 
burning at the back of her eyes, but she held 
herself tense, and would not let them come. 

“You didn’t come home that dark road by 
yourself, acushla ? ” he asked, in a softer voice, 
while he took her hand and patted it. He waited 
eagerly for the answer. 

Oh, no, papa,” she said measuredly, “ It was 


A QUESTION AND A RECALL. i77 

SO very late when we left the convent, that Jessie 
had to go home at once. So we left her at her 
own gate, and Mr. Hilliard came home with me. 
We ran nearly all the way, but it was so late, he 
could not come in. He must have been very late 
for dinner.’' 

Her father pulled her down fondly on his knee. 

“ He is a nice chap, that Mr. Hilliard,” he said, 
stroking her curls, and watching her from be- 
tween his narrowed eyelids. 

“ Very nice,” said Nora, with calm equanimity. 
“ The Olivers think very highly of him.” 

Fortunately for her. Miss Carew came into the 
room at this moment, and cut short the con- 
versation. 

“ Darling child ! ” she said, lifting up her hands, 
“ where have you been ? I was growing quite 
alarmed about you, and was glad your father 
slept so long, because he would have been 
alarmed too, if he had wakened and had not 
found you.” 

Nora went over her glib little explanation, and 
then ran upstairs to take off her out door things. 
When she came back Mary had brought the tea- 
tray, the barm-brack, and sweet loaf which were 
features of Christmas. Michael Halloran did 


178 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

not like Christmas. It involved too many holi- 
days for his workingmen. 

“ They’re better at feasts than fasts,” he used 
to say, and he was highly pleased when a holiday 
occurred on a Sunday. He would have readily 
agreed with some Englishmen, who put down 
saints’ days as a leading cause of Irish poverty 
and lack of thrift. 

After tea, a meal for which Nora had lately 
taken a distaste, — she would have liked late din- 
ners, but dared not suggest them to the conserva- 
tive old man, — she mixed her father’s punch and 
filled his pipe, and volunteered to read him the 
market reports in the Coolevara Chronicle, This 
last was a great amiability, for she hated the dull 
reading. The old man watched her as she sat 
with her head in the lamplight, with a new intent- 
ness. He seemed to be thinking deeply, and by 
the way he made her go over the lists again, it 
was evident he had not been following her. Pres- 
ently the heat of the fire and the punch made 
him sleepy, and he went off to bed. As he 
kissed his daughter, he said : 

My little girl has not told her old father what 
she’d like for a Christmas box. Eh ? ” 

“Oh, papa!” said Nora; “you are always 


A QUESTION AND A RECALL. ijg 

giving me things. I seem to have everything I 
could want.” 

“ Well, if there’s anything up to ten pounds 
you’ve set your heart on, anything the Miss 
Olivers might have, and you haven’t, let your 
old father know.” 

Mary had come in with his candle, and waited 
to speak. 

“ Miss Nora, honey,” she said, when he had 
gone, “ I’ve put a bit of fire in your room to 
make it cheerful. If you want anything, let me 
know before I go to bed.” 

Nora looked round at her aunt, who was deep 
in a novel of Miss Braddon’s. 

“ Auntie, dear, you won’t mind my leaving 
you ?” she said. “ I feel rather tired. Christmas 
is such a heavy day, don’t you think ? ” 

“ Go, dear,” assented her aunt. “ I am very 
well amused with my book. And sleep well, 
sweetheart.” 

Nora went upstairs slowly, with a deep sense of 
relief. Her little room, with its chintz curtains 
and pink paper, was cheerful, a sparkling fire, 
leaping in the grate. She took off her dress 
with a sense as if she were taking off fetters. 
Her heart had gone low now when she could. 


i8o THE WAY OF A MAID. 

unobserved, sit and review the things that had 
happened to her this Christmas Day. When she 
had got into her dressing-gown she sat by the 
table with her chin on her hands. The tears so 
long kept back would not come now, but ached 
somewhere unshed. She looked round the fa- 
miliar room, where for the last two months she 
had brought her sweet, shameful, mad love-dream. 
In this room she had looked at it as safely 
as in her own heart. But now the sweetness 
seemed all gone out of it, and only the shameful- 
ness remained. She could not think on Hilliard 
and his fierce kisses. ‘‘Ah,” she said out loud, 
in a forlorn little voice, “ I never thought I 
should be insulted, but I have been to-day.” 
Then her pain became fiercer. “ He should have 
remembered I was his cousin’s friend, even if I 
behaved so badly, and let him make all that 
careless love to me, and I as good as married. 
Oh, oh ! ” she cried out, at the intolerableness of 
her own thoughts. 

She covered her face with her hands for a 
few minutes. Then she took them down, and 
looked about her, her eyes smarting from the 
tight pressure upon them. She looked all 
round the room, and last at Jim’s photograph 


A QUESTION AND A RECALL. i8i 

which was on the table before her. She no- 
ticed that the flower she had given him a week 
ago was brown and withered. She took up the 
photograph and looked hard at it. There was 
kindness in the honest eyes, strength in the firm 
mouth. 

“ My dear,’' she said, “ why did you go away 
from me ? Why didn’t you stay and keep me 
straight ? Without you I am nothing. Oh, if 
you had been here, I would not have been 
ashamed to look you in the face to-night ! ” 

For the moment passion seemed abhorrent. 
She wanted the rest of a love ever the same, 
ever quiet and strong; the love which. Heaven 
forgive her! she had lately thought of as tame. 

Her mood changed, and anger began to burn 
in her against Hilliard. She walked up and down 
quickly, and the colour came into her cheeks, 
and the light to her eyes. How dared he to 
have treated her so, she thought ; made love to 
her, and not desired her for his wife; offered 
her his diamonds, who was the betrothed of a 
better man. Now, he would go away, no doubt, 
thinking he had left her hopelessly in love with 
him, dying for his sake, perhaps, like the girl in 
the poem he had read to her. 


i 82 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


She suddenly stopped in her tempestuous 
walk. A wild thought had come to her of ask- 
ing Jim to come back, to take the furlough he 
had rejected for the sake of his profession and 
ultimately for her sake. He had said that he 
left it with her and she — little fool that she had 
been ! — had thought it a fine thing to bid him 
stay and win himself a higher place against the 
time he should leave India. 

She acted with a sudden sense of exaltation. 
“ If I wait till to-morrow, I may change my 
mind,” she thought. Her desk was on the table 
by Jims picture. She opened it, and, taking 
paper, wrote her letter. 

“ My Dear [she wrote] : I thought I should 
have been strong enough to do without you for 
all those blank, cold years to come ! But I am 
not. I should die of it, I think. Perhaps if 
I could only see you I might be strong enough 
to let you go again. But come, come ! I know 
you will come, and I shall be counting the hours 
till you are here.” 

When she had signed it nervously, and with 
her cheeks burning and hands trembling, she felt 


A QUESTION AND A RECALL. 183 

that if she could only post it and it were beyond 
recall, the burden would have been rolled away 
that now was perceptibly pressing her heart 
down. There was just a chance that the faithful 
Lanty might be below, and for a sixpence he 
would be only too glad to take the letter to 
Coolevara. She ran down to the kitchen, softly 
passing the parlour door lest her aunt should 
hear her. When she opened the door there was 
Lanty himself “ colloguein ” with Mary by the 
fire. Nora felt for the moment such a sense of 
deliverance that she thought God must have 
willed it so. Mary was extracting items of 
gossip from the boy, and making sarcastic com- 
ments upon his news. There was not a child in 
the country too young for Mary to hold con- 
verse with. She found her fellow-creatures inex- 
haustibly interesting. 

“ Lanty, come here,” said Nora, at the kitchen 
door. “ ril give you sixpence if you'll run to 
Coolevara and post this letter. Will you ? ” 

“Wud a duck swim?” said Lanty shortly, 
taking the letter and sixpence, and his de- 
parture. 

Mary yawned, stretching her arms above her 
head. 


1 84 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

“ Larity was telling me, miss,” she said, “ how 
ould Joe Geraty an’ the wife an’ kid was dressed 
by the nuns for Christmas. He says Joe’s pep- 
perin’ for the day after to-morrow till he pawns 
the duds. Och, God help them cr’aturs o’ 
nuns — it’s too innocent they are ! Let alone 
they makes the clothes themselves, and the 
throusers is all bags. Lanty says the men in the 
town ’ud give Joe a quare life if he appeared in 
therri. The half-crowns apiece they gets is the 
best of the bargain, an’ Joe’s done a power of 
nigger-nuggerin’ for that.” 

Nora was used to Mary’s cynical views of 
things, and especially of voteens,” i. e., devout 
persons — so she only laughed. 

“ I’ll come an’ brush your hair, if you like, 
Miss Nora,” Mary volunteered next, an’ give 
you hot milk wid an egg be’t up in it when 
you’re in bed.” 

‘‘All right, Mary,” said Nora, who had often 
had a sad heart lifted by hearing Mary’s strange 
views of life. 

So Mary brushed her curls and seemed to 
brush away the headache which she had carried 
all the evening, and regaled her with the history 
of a funeral in the County Wexford, and the 


A qiTestion and a recall. 185 

squabble which had resulted when Mary’s Aunt 
Bridget insisted on standing on Joe Harris’ box- 
trees. 

So, after all the trouble, Nora fell asleep that 
night, smiling. 


CHAPTER XL 


A RECKONING. 

Hilliard’s feeling on his way back to Cro- 
martin was mainly rage — rage against himself 
and against the girl who had proved herself, after 
all, quite a match for him. He made fervid reso- 
lutions to put the sea between him and her. 
She had lowered him in his own eyes, for, half- 
unconsciously, he had been proud of himself all 
these years as Helen Illingworth’s lover, who had 
kept troth long after her husband had found a 
more equal mate, and whom no woman had been 
able to tempt from his allegiance to the dead. 
He had resolved when Helen died that he would 
put no woman in her place. Why, he remem- 
bered taking that clay-cold hand and whispering, 
“ You should have been my wife, you the mother 
of my children, and since you would not, no 
other woman shall take your place.” And there, 
after all, was his troth broken, his honour in 
ruins, for the sake of a little peasant, whose 
beauty and fancied passion for himself had set 

i86 


A RECKONING. 


187 


his imagination on fire. He had thought fine 
things of himself, and here he was as vulgarly 
a trifler as any young man about town. But he 
vowed as he strode along that that was all over, 
and at least he should save out of the fire what- 
ever shreds of will and manhood he could. 

Dinner was quite over at Cromartin when he 
arrived, and Mrs. Oliver was in the drawing-room. 
Jessie came running downstairs to meet him as 
he turned the handle of the door and came into 
the hall. 

“ You have been a time,” she said, “ but weVe 
kept things hot for you, and I’m going to pre- 
side. We would have waited, only father has 
a lot of business letters to put through to-night, 
and I persuaded mother not to keep forlorn state 
in the dining-room for you, so I’ve established 
her cosily in her arm-chair by the drawing-room 
fire, poor dear.” 

Did you get into trouble about the convent, 
Jess? ” asked Hilliard, taking off his coat. 

“ Not a bit of it,” she replied ; “ I rattled it all 
out the minute we sat down to dinner. Mother 
made a kind of helpless appeal to father: ‘Do 
you hear that Jessie has been visiting the con- 
vent, dear? I don’t think I like her to go 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


1 88 

there.’ Father answered, as if his mind weren’t 
on what she was saying : ‘ She is all right. They 
won’t make a nun of her, and as long as they 
don’t there’s nothing to object to.’ Mother said 
no more, but looked as if her thoughts were 
taken up with weightier things. We had a quiet 
dinner without you, St. Edmund. I can’t help 
thinking the pater and mater have something on 
their minds, poor dears.” 

What an imagination you have, Jess!” 
laughed Hilliard, as they went into the dining- 
room. A pity you don’t write novels and make 
money out of it.” 

“ Maybe I do, for all you know, my fine 
cousin,” replied Jessie. ‘‘ But here is your soup, 
and you must be pretty hungry.” 

But St. Edmund made a poor meal. There is 
nothing like excitement for spoiling the appetite, 
and he felt too disturbed to enjoy his dinner as 
he usually did. He put the blame on Mother St. 
Vincent’s delicious coffee and rolls. 

Before the meal was finished one of the maids 
came in and said that Mr. Oliver would be glad 
if Mr. Hilliard would step into the study before 
he went upstairs. After she had gone, Jessie 
said playfully : 


A RECKONING. 


189 


“ I believe you’ve been in mischief, St. Ed- 
mund, and that you are the cause of the gloom 
which sits on my parents’ brows.” 

To her amazement, Hilliard turned suddenly 
red. She was very contrite. 

Dear St. Edmund,” she said, “ you don’t 
think it was anything but a jest, and the wildest 
one at that ? Am I rude and stupid ? Of course 
it is the wildest jest, for there is no one for 
whom father has a more trusting affection — 
yes, and mother and all of us.” 

“ It’s all right, Jess,” answered Hilliard. “You 
are all always too good to me.” 

When dinner was over, he left her at the 
foot of the stairs and turned down the little 
corridor that led to Mr. Oliver’s study. He 
found that gentleman- writing away busily, but 
as he looked up from his desk as the door 
opened, Hilliard could not help noticing the 
worried look that usually open and jolly face 
bore. He pushed a chair for his visitor, and 
then handed him a box of cigars from the man- 
telshelf. 

“You wanted to see me, Arthur?” said Hil- 
liard, with the fluttering heart of a schoolboy 
who is called before the head master to receive 


1 90 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

sentence of birching. He lit a cigar, and took 
one or two agitated pulls. 

I did, St. Edmund,” answered Mr. Oliver 
solemnly. “ I want to ask you if this is yours.” 

He held out a bit of twisted pink paper covered 
over with small round writing. Hilliard recog- 
nised it at the first glance. It was a note which 
Nora had managed to convey to him after one of 
their twenty times of saying farewell forever. It 
was a compromising note, for it spoke of past 
meetings, and through the timid lines it was easy 
to read that it was a shy love-letter. Hilliard did 
not answer. He thrust the note into his pocket 
without looking closer at it. 

I thought it must be yours,” said Mr. Oliver. 
“You will acquit us of reading a letter of yours 
intentionally. There was no beginning, and 
only the name ‘ Nora ’ at the end by which to 
identify it. My wife found it on the stairs this 
afternoon just after you had gone out. It was 
very fortunate that she, and not one of the serv- 
ants, should have found it. I suppose ‘ Nora ’ is 
little Nora Halloran, my Jessie’s friend, and the 
daughter of as proud and self-respecting a man 
as any to be found in the world — yes, and the 
promised wife of another!” 


A RECKONING. 


191 

“ Yes,” answered Hilliard dejectedly, feeling 
the full reproach implied in the words, “ the 
letter is from Miss Halloran to me.” 

‘‘ I should like to know how far this affair has 
gone, St. Edmund,” said Mr. Oliver, looking and 
speaking very sternly. 

Hilliard broke into a vexed laugh. 

“ For God’s sake, don't look at me like that, 
Arthur! I’ve been a confounded fool, and be- 
haved pretty badly, I know, but, hang it all, I’m 
not scoundrel enough for you to speak to me like 
that 1 There’s been nothing more than a little 
clandestine love-making, which I drifted into 
innocently enough, and by a road of broken good 
resolutions.” 

“ It seems to me pretty bad, St. Edmund,” 
said Mr. Oliver. I certainly had no worse sus- 
picion of you and my little girl’s friend. And 
that poor child 1 I thought better of you, my 
lad, than to suppose you would tempt into a 
clandestine love affair a lady you met as my 
guest.” 

Hilliard winced. 

“ What did you mean by it ? ” continued Mr. 
Oliver pitilessly. “You did not want to marry 
her.” 


192 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


No,” said Hilliard, '' I never thought of mar- 
riage. I just drifted on from meeting to meet- 
ing. In cold blood I see how bad it was, but I 
was never in cold blood if I was within a quarter 
of a mile of her.” 

Well, my boy,” said Mr. Oliver, it’s no use 
piling it on. I didn’t suppose you wanted to 
marry her. She would wither in your London 
drawing rooms, poor little thing! and I doubt if 
she has the stuff in her to satisfy you, who loved 
Helen Illingworth. I think, my lad, you’ve be- 
haved badly. I might put a strong qualifying 
adjective to it, if it were my way to swear. But 
it’s no use rubbing it in. I never thought, St. 
Edmund, that I should have to ask you to leave 
my house. Now I do it with as much pain as if 
you were my own boy. But it is the only thing 
to be done. You must go to-morrow, St. Ed- 
mund, and give me your word to have no further 
communication with the girl.” 

If you were any other man, Arthur, I should 
tell you to go to the devil. Hang it all, am I so 
bad?” said Hilliard, moodily gazing at the gray 
butt of his cigar. “ I suppose it was too much to 
think that I had buried my youth and my man- 
hood at twenty-three. Nature might have taken a 


A RECKONING. 


193 


worse revenge .than that involved in kissing a 
little girl who had awakened in me feelings I 
thought dead forever.” 

Don't excuse yourself, my lad,” said Mr. 
Oliver coldly. “ Any lady you met in this house 
was under my charge and should have been 
respected by you." 

Hilliard looked up at him. 

“ You’ve been so extraordinarily straight your- 
self, Arthur, that you’ve no knowledge of what 
temptation is. If all the world was like you 
there’d be no justification for the doctrine of 
original sin. But you need say no more to me. 
God knows what you’ve said is punishment 
enough! I’ll be off to-morrow morning at cock- 
crow. I suppose there is no train to-night?” 

Mr. Oliver stood up and put his hand affec- 
tionately on the younger man’s shoulder. 

“ No such hurry, St. Edmund,” he said; “and 
don’t take it as if I were kicking you out. Don’t 
you see there’s no other way for it, as the girl 
seems to have infatuated you ? I know it must 
have been infatuation, for I believe you incapa- 
ble of such things in, as you say, cold blood. I 
won’t deny that it has shaken me, St. Edmund, 
but the proved love between you and me doesn’t 


194 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

go down before even such a shake. You will do 
as I tell you, my lad — go away and promise not 
to see or communicate with the girl any more? ” 
He looked at Hilliard’s downcast face with a 
tender and anxious scrutiny. 

‘‘ I suppose so, Arthur,” replied the latter. “ I 
hardly think she’ll trouble me when the sea’s 
between us, and I’m pretty sure I shan’t trouble 
her.” 

That’s right ! ” said Mr. Oliver cheerily. 
“ Come, don’t look so miserable over it. Let’s 
go up to the drawing-room now and have some 
music.” 

Hilliard shrunk back. “ Must I go, Arthur?” 
he said. “ I don’t like to face Mrs. Oliver and 
your girls after this confounded business. By 
the bye,” a fresh thought occurring to him, 
you won’t make Jessie drop the girl?” 

No,” said Mr. Oliver; “she’s only a child, 
poor little thing, and I hold you the blame- 
worthy party. Don’t be afraid of my wife. 
Trust Edith for almost unadulterated mercy in 
dealing with her fellow-creatures. The girls 
don’t know, and won’t know if you keep your 
parole. They’ll be lamenting when they hear 
you’re off to-morrow, but I’ll make it easy for 


A RECKONING. 


195 


you. Courage, St. Edmund ! Why, my wife has 
by this time made a thousand excuses for you. 
In every young man she sees our own boy grown 
older, and she loves you, St. Edmund.” 

When they came into the drawing-room, Mr. 
Oliver had his arm round Hilliard's shoulder. 
Mrs. Oliver looked up hopefully ; she had a 
glimmering idea that her favourite must be 
cleared, but her husband’s first words disillu- 
sioned her. 

“ St. Edmund finds, Edith, that he must be 
off to-morrow.” 

The two girls broke out in protestation, but 
their father silenced them with an uplifted hand. 

“ It is absolutely necessary. Do you think a 
man and a landed proprietor is of no more 
account, when he slips out of his world for a 
time, than a pair of little idle hussies who make 
a great pTetence of being busy ? ” 

“ Oh, but what shall we do without St. 
Edmund?” broke out a clamorous duet. 

“And what about the Hunt Ball?” cried 
Jessie. 

“And the meet at Tinora’s Cover?” echoed 
May. 

“And the skating?” said Jessie dolefully. 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


196 

“ St. Edmund promised to show us how they 
skate at St. Petersburg.” 

There,” said Mr. Oliver ; you’re making 
your cousin feel melancholy. Be off with the 
pair of you and let him hear his favourite music 
and songs for to-night. Oh, by the way, what 
about the book of carols he gave you to learn ? ” 

The two girls went to the piano, and soon their 
fresh young voices rang out in the old carols: 
“Good King Wenceslas ” and “God Rest You, 
Merry Gentlemen.” 

Mrs. Oliver meanwhile had motioned Hilliard 
to sit by her. She saw he looked downcast, and 
her heart yearned over the culprit, for her way 
was to love the sinner while she hated the sin. 
As he sat there watching her while she listened 
to the Christmas sOngs, he felt himself within the 
circle of a divine, all-forgiving kindness. Mr. 
Oliver lay back in his arm-chair, dreamily listen- 
ing, and tapping with his finger on the chair. It 
was hard for Hilliard to believe that he was really 
going forth to-morrow in a kind of disgrace. The 
Christmas peace, a veritable truce of God, seemed 
to hover over the house. 

When Hilliard went to his room he found that 
it was snowing. The moon was misty with the 


A RECKONING. 


197 


fine falling flakes, and the church clock in 
Coolevara, the same which he and Nora had 
heard that evening, struck with a muffled sound. 
His thoughts went to his fellow-culprit. He 
wondered how she was feeling, and how she 
would feel when she heard he was gone. He 
took out the unlucky diamond bracelet and flung 
it into his open trunk. Her reception of his 
offering had certainly made him feel uncom- 
monly small. He was glad to think that she 
would hear in a day or two that he was gone, and 
would realise that she need not have been so 
haughty with him, after all. How would she feel 
about it ? Perhaps she would cry, but soon she 
would begin to hate him when no message came, 
and after a time to despise him. That was not a 
pleasant thought. What a world of difference 
there was between their attitude to each other 
now, and the wild love-making of the last two 
months. Could they have believed when her 
head rested on his shoulder, and their lips 
met in the silent twilight, that so soon there 
would come such a cold severance between 
them ? He wondered if he would miss her out of 
his life. He supposed he would, though London 
was full of pleasant houses and pleasant folk 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


waiting to receive him back into their midst. 
She had made him feel more in the last two 
months than he had in all the dreary years since 
Helen died. He was glad to know he was still 
a young man and could feel like his contempora- 
ries, but it was a small set-off against Arthur’s 
disappointment in him and his disappointment 
in himself. He wished he could have come 
out of it better. 

This way and that way went his wavering 
thoughts before he fell asleep. He awoke in the 
morning to a snowy world. There was a long, 
indolent morning to be got through before the 
mail train left Coolevara at three. After break- 
fast he stood in the dining-room window over- 
looking the snowy spires of the town, and the 
long, smooth stretches of white velvet between, 
on which some sheep were disconsolately rooting 
for a mouthful of grass. He did not know what 
to do with himself. There was not time enough 
to begin anything, though there was too much 
time for doing nothing. The girls, after hover- 
ing about him uneasily for some time, had settled 
to their avocations. Mr. Oliver was interviewing 
some of the tenants in his study. Mrs. Oliver 
was closeted with the cook. Only Codger rubbed 


A RECKONING. 


199 


insinuatingly against his leg, and suggested that 
it was a fine morning for a walk. The Pomer- 
anian, who was wheezy, and took no outdoor 
exercise in winter, was no companion for an 
open-air-loving sportsman like Codger- 

Hilliard looked down at the little yellow head. 

“ No, old chap,” he said, “ it’s no go. You and 
I don’t go for any more walks. Codger.” 

It was surprising how sad he felt as he said it. 

Yesterday morning, if so be he had an unappro- 
priated hour or two, he would have known well 
where to spend them, and where a face would 
flush and an eye brighten at his coming. He 
shook himself impatiently. No, he must not 
think of the girl any more, or if he did it must be 
as the little spitfire who had so furiously repulsed 
him, who had played that mad prank of putting 
her own life and his in danger. How she had 
terrified him ! And how coolly she had taken it 
afterward, ordering him off about his business as 
haughtily as a duchess ! He felt an agreeable 
wave of the rage which had warmed him last 
night as he strode home in the moonlight. 

After lunch Mr. Oliver drove him to the sta- 
tion. Mrs. Oliver had pled piteously with her 
husband to keep him another day and not let 


200 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


him turn out in the snow, but the worthy gentle- 
man was obdurate. “ I want him to feel,” he 
said, “ when he goes back to London and is per- 
haps tempted by the thought of the girl, — and 
mind, Edith, my dear, she’s an uncommonly 
tempting morsel, — I want him to feel that he’s 
tied up stringently, so there must be no undue 
softness in dealing with him ; it’s for his good, 
my dear.” 

So it came that when Hilliard asked Mr. Oliver, 
on their way to the station, whether he ought not 
to write at least to Miss Carew to explain that he 
had been called away too suddenly for a farewell 
visit, he was met with an emphatic “ No.” 

Let them hear no more of you,” he said. “ It 
is all you can do. If the little girl thinks it 
strange and bad of you, then she will forget you 
all the sooner.” 

“ It might be, Arthur,” said Hilliard drily, 
“that some men might not consider that a thing 
to be joyfully anticipated.” 

“ Perhaps not,” said Mr. Oliver, “ and I didn’t 
suggest it as a matter of joyful anticipation to 
you. But if it isn’t pleasant you must swallow it. 
You wouldn’t have her grieve for you ! All the 
same, if I were young Hurley I’d come home for 


A RECKONING. 


201 


her. He’s put too hard a test on her. All those 
years of absence might well wear out a girl’s 
love.” 

“ If he cared for her he would come,” said 
^ Hilliard. “There are always so many things that 
may happen in this world of change and mis- 
chance and death.” 

He looked gloomily over the white landscape, 
and Mr. Oliver conjectured he was thinking of 
Helen Illingworth. 

“You mustn’t generalise, my lad,” he said. 
“I’ve no doubt young Hurley is soundly in love 
with his affianced wife. But there are some 
natures always bent by shadowy fears for those 
they love, and others, more confident, that never 
anticipate misfortunes. I expect the long ab- 
sence in this case is as hard on the man as 
the woman. India’s an unhomelike place at 
best.” 

The train was drawing up to the platform as 
they got into the station, so there was not much 
time for conversation. But Mr. Oliver pressed 
Hilliard’s hand warmly as the train began to 
move. “ Remember,” he said, “ that the old love 
between us can never be broken, my lad, and you 
are doing the right thing now in going away.” 


202 7'HE way of a maid. 

Hilliard answered with an affectionate hand-clasp, 
and the train sped away over the snow. 

Certainly Cromartin was dull without him. 
After they had gone, Jessie mooned about aim- 
lessly, while the more duty-bound May devoted 
herself to answering her Christmas letters. '*' I 
do wish you’d do something, Jess,” May at last 
complained. You’re hindering me by walking 
round in that aimless fashion, taking up things 
and putting them down, as though there weren’t 
so many things to be done that the day is too 
short to do the half of them in.” 

“ You’re always busy over nothing. May,” 
Jessie retorted impudently. “Dear me!” she 
said ; “ it does unsettle one to have people 
going away. Here’s Codger too feels it, old 
doggums.” 

Codger looked up at her and then out of the 
window, saying as plainly as dog could say it : 
“ Do take me for a walk.” 

Jessie understood him and responded: “All 
right, old chap ! I’ll leave you in May’s uncon- 
genial company while I put on my hat.” 

The afternoon was bright and cold, and Jessie 
stepped out into the snow with a sensible exhila- 
ration, while Codger ran here and there, flinging 


A RECKONING. 


203 


the snow over his head and having a regular 
good time of it. After a brisk trot, Jessie called 
him to her. “ Now where shall we go, Codger?” 
she asked. “Would you like to make an after- 
noon call on Rags?” 

“Yes! yes!” barked Codger joyfully. 

“ All right, old fellow,” said his mistress, “ I 
take you at your word ; ” and she turned in the 
direction of the glen. 

Nora was engaged in the engrossing feminine 
occupation of “ tidying up ” her possessions 
when she heard Jessie’s knock. _ She had very 
little doubt that the visitor was Hilliard, and she 
lifted her head with angry scorn at his presump- 
tion in coming again. He would soon see that 
things were to be very different between them, 
and the sooner he knew it the better ; so it was 
perhaps as well he had presumed to-day, after all. 

She crept to her door, and listened while Mary 
opened the hall door. She heard Jessie’s voice, 
and the scamper in the hall as Codger and Rags 
flew ecstatically into each other’s arms. Then as 
the parlour door closed, she prepared to descend 
in a very stately way. She met Mary halfway. 

“ Miss Jessie Oliver, miss ” she began, and 

then beat a hurried retreat. 


204 THE WA Y OF A MAID. 

Nora walked into the room with her head very 
high in the air. It was something of a drop for 
her to find only Jessie. She looked round the 
room as if expecting someone else. To her an- 
noyance Jessie divined her thought. 

Oh, did you expect to see St. Edmund ? ” 
she said. Why, he’s gone, poor dear, and 
we’re all in doleful dumps. That’s why I’ve 
come to inflict myself on you, Noreen.” 

Nora felt rather sold. She did not say she 
had expected Mr. Hilliard, but only made some 
conventional remark about the disagreeableness 
of people going away. It flashed through her 
mind that all the fine withering scenes in which 
she was to have met him need not have been 
planned at all, since they were little likely to 
come off now. She listened to Jessie’s praises 
of him in so distraite a manner that the latter 
rallied her on her absent-mindedness. They had 
drawn closer to the fire, and had settled down 
comfortably for a good chat. 

I believe something has happened, Noreen,” 
said her friend, “ for you look as if you were 
miles and miles away from everything I am 
saying. Is it anything about Jim?” 

Nora broke into a sudden lovely flush that 


A RECKONING, 205 

would have distracted Hilliard if he could have 
seen it. She looked into the heart of the fire for 
a moment without replying. 

“Yes,” she said at last, “ there is something 
about Jim. I’ve written and asked him to come 
back.' I found that, after all, I couldn’t face 
those years.” 

Jessie. gave her a very hearty kiss. 

“ Why, you poor little thing ! ” she said ; “ I 
expect you’ve been suffering agonies of loneli- 
ness since you made the heroic resolve to bid 
him stick to his post. And to think I never 
guessed it ! ” 

Nora withdrew herself gently from Jessie’s 
embrace. 

“ Why, of course I was lonely,” she said. 
“ Wouldn’t any girl be lonely under the circum- 
stances?” • 

Jessie agreed heartily that any girl would. 

“ Keep it secret, please, Jess, till I hear that he 
is really coming,” said Nora, as they parted. 

“ All right, old girl ! ” replied the cheerful 
Jessie. “Mum’s the word!” 


3 


CHAPTER XII. 

“I WILL COME AGAIN, MY DEAR.’' 

Nora kept her letter secret from all except 
Jessie. She did not even tell Mrs. Hurley, 
though she had taken a fancy for spending a 
great part of her days with Jim’s mother. Mrs. 
Hurley turned warmly to the girl’s new affection 
for her. Her own daughters, in their other- 
worldliness, seemed at times too remote from 
her. Mary was gone, and Eily, as if that would 
hasten the hour of her flitting, had begun to 
make her trousseau — garments of the coarsest 
materials and plainest Ynake, such as the brides 
of Christ use. Poor Mrs. Hurley, despite her 
heartfelt piety, almost broke her heart over that 
trousseau. No one but her husband and, per- 
haps, her confessor knew. Sometimes she had 
to run away from the parlour where Eily sat 
knitting rough stockings and fashioning under- 
garments of the most rigid kind, and would 
return, having recovered her self-control, with 

206 


“/ WILL COME AGAIN, MY DEAR!' 207 

a mist over her kind blue eyes and a pucker of 
pain about her placid mouth. 

At night, when Eily had finished her office and 
retired to her pallet, the mother's fortitude some- 
times gave way. 

“ Oh, John, John !” she would say; “I don't 
grudge them to God, but God knows it's bitter. 
It's hard to give the two of them, so it is. It's 
the clothes kills me. I often think how glad 
I would be if it was little linen and lace things 
Eily was making up for her marriage, or maybe 
finer things yet for a little baby." 

Whisht, whisht, achora," her husband would 
say fondly. Sure it's the proud woman you 
ought to be, giving two nuns to God. And how 
often I have heard yourself saying that no one 
ever knew how an earthly marriage was going to 
turn out, but there could be only one way with 
the heavenly marriage." 

In these circumstances it may be readily be- 
lieved that Mrs. Hurley was very glad when Nora 
took a new turn of coming to her constantly. 
There had been a time when she hardly ever 
came, and it had been a grief to the kind, moth- 
erly woman, but she had hidden it in her own 
breast. Nora, who had grown very tender and 


2o8 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


appealing, seemed to creep into a child’s place in 
her heart. Her hidden sense of guilt made the 
girl more appealingly affectionate, and the poor 
woman, who had carried a hidden fret under the 
eagerness of her girls for the cloister, took Nora 
into her heart with a warm sense of her ex- 
treme humanness. After a time it became a re- 
lief to both of them when Eily would pack away 
her rough flannel and take her rapt young face 
and absorbed mind away to the compline at the 
convent, and leave these two alone in the twi- 
light. Mrs. Hurley plucked up visibly under this 
new comfort, and began to anticipate more 
calmly the 25th of March, when Eily was to 
depart to her distant Convent of Mercy. That 
austere young person had no sweeter ambition 
than presently to be sent out on mission work 
to India or Africa. She talked over her desires 
with such cold-blooded pleasure, so to speak, that 
the mother’s heart was half-vexed, half-proud, at 
the supernatural mind of her girl. John Hurley, 
meanwhile, was well pleased to come in and find 
his wife and prospective daughter-in-law, as he 
expressed it, “ costering each other,” for he had 
learnt to dread Eily’s leaving them more for his 
wife’s sake than his own. 


/ WILL COME A CAIN-, MV DEARr 209 

It was a bright spring-like day of early Febru- 
ary when Nora’s great news came. A south wind 
had melted last week’s snow, except where it lay 
in patches under the hedgerows, and every little 
gully was shouting gaily. The snowdrops were 
out in the gardens, and the birds had begun their 
spring songs. It was very early in the day for a 
visit from Nora, and Mrs. Hurley, in the parlour, 
was making up her household accounts when Nora 
came rushing in. 

Guess my news ! ” she said, waving a letter in 
her hand. She had run nearly all the way from 
home, and her eyes were dancing, her cheeks 
flushed, and her quick breath coming and going 
through her parted lips. She brought the fresh- 
ness and joy of the spring into the room with her. 

Mrs. Hurley drew down her face and kissed it. 

“Something about Jim, to be sure,” she said. 
“ Has he got promotion ? ” 

“ Better still, little mother,” said the girl, 
leaning over from behind her. “ He’s coming 
home! He’ll be here by Easter!” 

Mrs. Hurley jumped up and took the girl in 
her arms. 

“ Now, how did you manage that, you little 
witch ? ” she said. “ I thought you’d arranged 


210 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


between you that he was to stay out there wait- 
ing for that weary promotion.” 

I asked him to come, and he is coming,” said 
Nora simply. She opened the letter more quietly 
and read bits of it to the delighted mother. One 
could read between the lines of it that Jim, strong 
as he was, was rejoiced at his recall. 

“ We were foolish, little mother,” said Nora, 
“ to have thought we could wait all that long 
time.” 

Preparations began so joyfully in the Hurley 
household to welcome home the exile that Eily 
suggested she might as well have taken herself 
off at once to her novitiate instead of postponing 
her departure till the 25th of March. Her mother 
looked at her with her heart in her eyes when she 
said it. 

“ Avourneen,” she said, “ don’t you know it ’ll 
be taking the heart out of me to part with you, 
even though my boy’s coming home. Be content 
with us for a month longer. Your father and I 
have done all we could to make your home 
happy. Don’t be in such a hurry to go out 
of it.” . 

Nora, meanwhile, had told her aunt that Jim 
was coming home. At first the two rejoiced to- 


“/ WILL COME AGAIN, MY DEAR. 


2II 


gether. A little shadow fell over their joy when 
they thought of breaking the news to Michael 
Halloran. Both felt it would be no good news 
to him ; and they had an uneasy suspicion that 
the reluctant consent, only given in view of the 
long separation, might be now repented of or 
even withdrawn. Nora began, with some mis- 
givings, to put together her marriage outfit— 
things widely different from Eily Hurley’s. Day 
by day little packets of delicate lingerie reached 
her from London or Dublin, for Nora was not 
one to make her own outfit. The packets, when 
delivered in her father’s presence, she put by un- 
opened, and he asked no questions. He was not 
accustomed to pry into his daughter’s feminine 
concerns, suspicious as he was of the outside 
world, and when Nora had claimed ten pounds 
as her Christmas box, he had given it to her with- 
out question. He had asked the reason of the 
cessation of Mr. Hilliard’s visits soon after they 
had ceased, and had made no comment when 
told he had left, but in his heart he had been 
deeply disappointed. He had dreamed some 
ambitious dreams for his little girl, woven of a 
fabric so unsubstantial as Hilliard’s apparent lik- 
ing for visiting the House by the Mill. Perhaps 


212 


THE WA V OF A MAID. 


it was as well for Jim’s prospects that the disap- 
pointment had been sharp, but the old man kept 
that hidden in his own breast and no one sus- 
pected it. 

All Nora’s little packets were taken over for 
Mrs. Hurley’s approval, and presently they made 
a goodly pile. Mrs. Hurley had a true woman’s 
pleasure in the pretty cambric and lace things run 
through with coloured ribbon, all so much more 
exquisite than anything which had been dreamt 
of when she was a girl. Even the austere Eily 
was tempted to inspect and admire, though she 
returned to her own coarse stuffs with a renewed 
zest. Then Jessie Oliver came for an afternoon, 
and spent an hour sitting by the lire in Nora’s 
room, while the contents of the big brown trunk 
were lifted out one by one and laid in her lap. 

Nora could never say the exact time when 
her satisfaction began to fizzle out. Perhaps it 
was that evening when she and Jessie had a real 
good old chat, as the latter put it ; and when 
Miss Sylvia thoughtfully sent them their tea up- 
stairs, and Jessie sat in the basket-chair, while 
Nora, with all her pretty things strewn around 
her, sat on the rug, her hands clasped about her 
knees and her tea-cup by her side. 


* ‘ / WILL COME A GAIN, M Y DEA R."' 213 

The conversation turned on Hilliard. Nora 
had hitherto kept Jessie from talking about him, 
but as the weeks went by and her own prospects 
became assured, her heat of anger against him 
seemed to evaporate. She even found a pleas- 
ure in talking about him this evening, and Jessie 
was well content to discourse on her beloved 
cousin, with an occasional syllable of encourage- 
ment from her friend. Jessie usually idealised, 
and Hilliard did not suffer at her hands. She 
chattered on about his lonely boyhood, the 
brilliant promise of his Oxford years, his 
chivalrous attachment to Mrs. Illingworth, his 
devotion to her memory ; and, led on by a 
question or two from the listener, she described 
the beauty of his old house in Lincolnshire and 
its surrounding woods and pastures, and his 
London house as her father had described it with 
all its delicate evidences of taste and refinement 
and wealth spent with judgment. 

“ If St. Edmund never marries,” said Jessie, 
“ it will all go to Carrie’s little boy; and unless he 
takes the name of Hilliard — which is never quite 
the same thing — the old name will die out.” 

But he will marry! ” said Nora, in a startled 


voice. 


214 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

I don’t know,” said Jessie, vaguely pleased 
at the interest she was exciting. ^‘You see St. 
Edmund has a very faithful nature. Father says 
that his love for his mother, who was an invalid, 
was most touching, and the loss of her saddened 
his boyhood so much. And then he has 
mourned for Mrs. Illingworth as few husbands 
mourn for their wives. I am sure no woman 
has made his heart beat once in the years 
since she died.” 

Nora did not assent ; she knew better. But 
after that interview her thoughts began to hover 
dangerously about the memory of those two 
months. Jessie had unsettled her mind about 
Hilliard again. He could not have been coldly 
trifling with her, after all, she came to think. 
She recalled the events of those two months, 
and, considering many things that had happened, 
she concluded at last that his feeling had been 
genuine at the time ; he had not thought of 
asking her to marry him, but then their whole 
intercourse had been so fragmentary; she had 
not been a free woman, and at every meeting 
they had resolved to part. The thought of him 
recurred to her more and more despite her 
virtuous attempts to put him out of her mind. 


“/ WILL COME AGAIN, MY DEARr 215 

And she was expecting a letter to tell her Jim 
had settled his day of sailing. 

She grew fretful and morbid once more. She 
raged at herself for her instability of mood, but 
little by little a fear of Jim’s return began to 
grow up within her. Then Jessj^e came one day 
with a letter in her pocket, and showed it to 
Nora when they were together. Jessie had a 
little pucker in her white forehead over the 
letter, the contents of which had troubled her. 

want you to read it, Noreen, dear,” she 
said. I’ve been worried about it. I know 
you’re as innocent as the babe unborn, but I 
can’t help thinking you’ve singed poor St. 
Edmund’s wings in your flame. I remember 
now that he used to like so much coming here, 
and that he always managed to have you 
included in our plans — not that that was difficult 
so far as I was concerned.” 

Nora turned red and pale as she took the 
letter. The sight of the strong, firm handwriting 
made her heart leap. He began with the gay 
tenderness which was always in his manner to 
Jessie. He asked for Codger, and the letter 
rattled on a page or two of light jesting. Then 
came this sentence : 


2i6 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


“ I want you to tell me something — anything 
you can — of your little friend, Miss Halloran. 
And, dear Jess, dear little comrade, don’t say 
to anyone that I asked you.” 

“Now, I have a feeling,” said Jessie, when 
Nora had come to that paragraph, “ that the 
letter wasfwritten for the sake of asking just that 
question. If it were any other man, I shouldn’t 
mind, any ordinary, flirtatious young man who 
was interested in your pretty face — but St, 
Edmund r She paused to emphasise her amaze- 
ment. “ And you can see, the dear old fellow, 
that he doesn’t pretend anything with me. He 
asks me honestly to tell him what he very 
much wants to know. Now, what do you think 
of it, Noreen?” 

To her bewilderment Nora covered her face 
with her hands, and her shoulders began to 
shake convulsively with her sobs. 

“ You poor little thing ! ” said Jessie ; “I didn’t 
mean to accuse jyou of anything. ‘You’re not re- 
sponsible for your beauty and the confoundedly 
taking way you have with you,’ as once I heard 
a young gentleman remark.” 

But Nora wept on, and would not be com- 


“/ WILL COME AGAIN, MY DEAR." 217 

forted. When she had exhausted her tears she 
got up, apparently ashamed of herself, and 
bathed her eyes. Jessie followed her about 
with a mute appeal and eyes full of trouble. 
When Nora had recovered herself she clasped 
both her strong arms about her. 

“Tell me, Noreen, ” she whispered, “are you 
happy? I shall be so miserable if I think you 
are not — but you surely are ? “ 

“ Happy ! “ said Nora ; “ I think any woman 
with a lover like mine coming home to her in a 
month should be happy.” 

“ Indeed she should ! ” assented Jessie heartily. 
Jessie went slowly back to Cromartin, deeply 
ruminating. That outbreak of Nora’s troubled 
her, but there! Nora was such a creature of 
moods and whimsies that you never knew when 
you had her. Jessie tried to put the matter out 
of her mind, but somewhere at the back of her 
thoughts it troubled her. And Nora grew once 
again uncertain in her moods, and for many 
evenings Mrs. Hurley looked for her in vain. 
On such evenings the girl was fighting her battle. 
Again and again a face was in her thoughts, a pas- 
sionate, finely-cut face, very unlike Jim Hurley’s 
square-jawed honesty. A voice was at her ears, 


2i8 the way of a maid. 

a breath on her eyelids. How often she cried 
out, shuddering, as a saint of old to the tempter : 
'‘Oh, leave me! Why do you haunt me?” 
Yet the face remained, and the sensation of its 
closeness was ravishingly sweet to her senses. 
Nora began to have sleepless nights, and to 
come down in the morning with shadows under 
her eyes. And Jim Hurley was even then 
making his way across country to embark at 
Madras. 

One afternoon Nora was sitting idly in her 
own room, “ doing nothing but twiddling her 
thumbs,” as Mary expressed it. In reality she 
was engaged in the struggle in which she was 
every day more beaten and depressed. She was 
beginning to dread her lover’s return, which 
every day was coming nearer. She had pleaded 
neuralgia as an excuse for her low spirits, her 
heavy eyes, and evident languor, and had begged 
to be left alone. There was a knock at the door. 
“ Oh, come in 1 ” said Nora, with weary impa- 
tience. 

It was Mary, bursting with some news or other. 
But then Mary was so amazingly interested in 
the most commonplace doings that Norah’s 
curiosity was seldom roused. She looked her 


‘ ‘ / WILL COME A GAIN, M Y DEAR." 2 1 9 

weary protest at the sudden intrusion, but Mary 
was too excited to notice. 

‘‘ Miss Nora, darlin’,’’ she said, “your aunt has 
a visitor. An’ I’d say by the cut of him he’s a 
sayfarin’ man — I mane to say gentleman. He 
walks with a wobble, the same as the foreign 
man Mary Geraghty married, — more betoken 
she’s home, with a black eye, an’ he took up wid 
another woman.” 

Mary paused for breath, and to see how her 
news was received. Nora was quite wakened up 
from her lethargy. She remembered her aunt’s 
love-story. 

“ What else is he like, Mary ? ” she said 
eagerly. “ Is he old or young ? ” 

“ Oh, a personable man,” said Mary, “ mixed 
middlin’ as to age. I could swear I heard your 
aunt give a little screech out of her as she stood 
up an’ saw him plain. An’ if I’m not mistaken 
he addressed her by name. Maybe he’s a blood- 
relation, miss?” suggested Mary, with keen 
curiosity. 

“ I don’t know that we’ve any relative who is a 
sailor,” said Nora, smiling faintly. “ However, I 
dare say we’ll know who the visitor is all in good 
time, Mary.” 


220 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


Nora waited for a long time, but no summons 
came from the parlour. Tea hour drew near, 
when her father would be coming in for his even- 
ing meal, and Mary, who had the tea-tray ready, 
began to make scurrying flights up and down 
stairs to take Nora’s advice as to whether she 
might make bould to go in for Mary was de- 
voured with curiosity. Nora was curious herself, 
as she sat heaped up in her bedroom in a chilly 
little bunch, but she kept Mary in check till she 
thought it was really time to disturb the friends, 
whose conclave had been long and close. 

She put on one of her prettiest frocks with an 
unconscious coquetry, and went slowly down- 
stairs. At the door she paused, and coughed 
loudly, with her hand on the door-handle. Then 
she turned it and went in. 

A bronzed, bearded, rather elderly man, evi- 
dently very much at home, was sitting in her 
father’s chair by the fire. Her aunt was facing 
her as she entered, having just stood up; but 
what a change there was in her ! The elderly, 
faded look had dropped away, and Sylvia Carew 
was flushed like a rose. Her eyes were moist, 
as with recent tears, her lips were parted in a 
dreamy smile ; she looked surprisingly young 


*‘7 WILL COME AGAIN, MY DEAR." 221 

and eager and tender. She made a step or two 
forward, and drew Nora within the circle of the 
lamplight. “ Oh, dear child, forgive me if I 
forgot about you. Oh, Nora, my ship has come 
home ! ” 

The broad-shouldered man in the chair came 
out of his retirement. His head was iron-gray, 
and there was gray in his crisp beard, but his 
face had a boyish lo^ok ; the look of a man who 
had kept his illusions. 

He took Nora’s hand in a great grip that 
almost made her cry out. Even while he spoke, 
his eyes wandered to Sylvia Carew’s face. 

‘‘ I’ve come home for my wife. Miss Nora,” he 
said. “ Sylvia’s been telling me that she told you 
ou\ etory, a while ago.” 

Oh, yes! ” said Nora. “ I thought it must be 
you when Mary told me of Aunt Sylvia’s visitor. 
Oh, how very, very glad I am ! ” 

'‘Of course you are,” said the man, with a jolly 
heartiness, and standing on the hearth-rug he 
slipped his arm round Miss Carew’s waist. “ And 
I’m not going to wait, I can tell you. Miss Nora. 
I’ve waited nearly twenty long years, and though 
its only made her sweeter and prettier, it’s a long, 
long slice out of a man’s life.” 


222 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


He looked at her with the most tender admi- 
ration, and Nora felt a fierce little stab of some- 
thing — was it envy ? 

Her aunt slid away from the embrace, and 
went quickly out of the room, smiling and blush- 
ing. He stood there straddling the hearth-rug, 
laughing and talking in the highest of spirits till 
she returned. She came back in a little while, 
transformed, her cap gone, and her soft abundant 
hair piled high on her head. She had on her 
gray silk dress, with a fichu of old yellow lace 
softening its rigid, elderly style. One of the 
late yellow roses that grew on the sheltered 
side of the house was caught in the lace. She 
rustled in with a shy, deprecating smile. 

This is a great day for us, Nora, dear,” she 
said, with a look that asked for understanding 
and sympathy. 

Nora had never realised how young-looking 
her aunt was for her years. Now, looking at her 
in the soft lamplight, she said to herself that no 
one would ever take her to be a day over thirty. 
Michael Halloran presently was heard in the 
hall, and Nora ran out to meet him. He knew 
his sister-in-law’s old romance already. Nora 
caught at his sleeve. 


“/ WILL COME AGAIN, MY EE A El' 223 

Come, dear,’’ she said, “ upstairs, and put on 
your very best coat before you go in to tea. 
There’s the most wonderful visitor in all the 
world in that parlour.” 

“ Who ? ” said the old man, looking at her 
sharply, and with his face lowering. He thought 
it was perhaps Jim Hurley, and the girl, di- 
vining his thoughts, shivered, as in a cold blast. 

She answered him in a chilled little voice : 

“ It is Aunt Sylvia’s sweetheart come back after 
all those long years. And though I have heard 
nothing yet, I think things are all right now.” 

Relief made Michael Halloran cheerful. 

That’s good news,” he said ; “ the best I’ve 
heard for many a long day. She’ll be leaving us 
by ourselves, then, eh, little girl ? ” 

“Oh, I suppose so,” said Nora. “They seem 
very happy together.” 

Michael Halloran changed his coat, and, com- 
ing in dressed and ordered, greeted John Weston 
warmly. The old man showed at his best in his 
warm Irish hospitality. He would not hear of 
the returned traveller going back to the inn at 
Coolevara. Lanty was despatched at once to 
fetch Captain Weston’s luggage. Sylvia Carew 
sat in a placid beatitude while Nora put finishing 


224 


THE WA Y OF A MAID. 


touches to the tea-table, adding a cold fowl and a 
ham and some other substantial viands, to which 
John Weston did justice, despite his many raptur- 
ous glances at his sweetheart. 

After tea, while the two men sat and smoked, 
the big spare room was prepared for the guest. 
Miss Carew insisted on helping in this delightful 
work, spreading herself the fine sheets which had 
been so long in her care, and patting the lavender- 
scented folds with her still beautiful hands. At 
last Nora caught her and thrust her into the big 
arm-chair by the fire. 

“ Now, come out of your trance, you dear 
bride that is to be,” she said, “ and tell us all 
about it. Afterward I’ll let you give the room 
its finishing touches, but now I’m devoured by 
curiosity.” 

“ Oh, Nora,” said Miss Carew, “ there’s very 
little to tell. But it’s only now he’s a free man, 
though he never saw his wicked wife all those 
years. He came back at once. And he says we 
are to be married as soon as ever the law will 
allow us. He won’t hear of waiting for anything. 
He has left the sea, and says we can have a house 
anywhere I like. I told him every place in the 
world was the same to me.” 


I WILL COME AGAIN, MY DEAR I ' 225 

“ So long as you had him, darling,” said Nora, 
fondly smiling down at her. 

“ Yes, dear,” assented her aunt, with a sigh of 
content. 

After Michael Halloran had gone to bed, Nora 
discreetly retired. 

“ I want you to light a fire in my room, Mary,” 
she said, “ and then you can come and sit with 
me for a while.” 

She was afraid to be by herself, for her unhap- 
piness was taking definite shape. 

That night, after Mary had taken herself and 
her original mind off to slumber, Nora fell asleep, 
wetting her pillow with her tears. The sight of 
this real faithful love had made her sick with dis- 
may for herself. 

Oh, Jim, Jim ! ” she sobbed against her pillow. 
“If only I could think I should look at you as 
Aunt Sylvia looks at her lover, and know you the 
one man in all the world for me ! But I cannot, 
I cannot ! and I am so ashamed and afraid, that I 
think I shall die when I meet your eyes.” 

But Sylvia Carew lay awake in the moonlight, 
thanking God over and over because her ship had 
come home after twenty years. 


CHAPTER XIIL 


‘‘ LOVE WILL FIND THE WAY.” 

Mr. Oliver was sorting the letters at the 
luncheon table at Cromartin. 

“ One, and a missionary magazine, for Mrs. 
Oliver ; two for May ; a book and a letter for 
Jessie ; and all the bills for the pater.” 

“ Isn’t that mine, too?” said Jessie, stretching 
an eager hand for a large square envelope, very 
boldly addressed. “ I see it’s St. Edmund’s writ- 
ing, and I’m St. Edmund’s correspondent. Be- 
sides, he owes me a letter, for I wrote him one 
with all the gossip a few days ago.” 

'‘Not so fast, Jess,” said her father. “Read 
your own letter, and don’t be greedy. This is 
addressed to Arthur Oliver, Esq.” 

There was a moment’s silence while everyone 
turned to his or her correspondence. It was 
broken by a low whistle of dismay from the mas- 
ter of the house. He had put down his letters, 
and was looking very grave. 


226 


**LOVE WILL FIND THE WAYT 227 

I hope there is nothing wrong, Arthur,” said 
Mrs. Oliver anxiously. 

No, my dear,” he answered, “ it was only 
something that surprised me.” 

He ate his breakfast in abstraction. When 
he had finished, he gathered up his letters in the 
same absent-minded manner and thrust them into 
his pocket. 

“ Edith, my dear,” he said, “ will you come 
into my study for a moment ? I want a little 
chat with you.” 

Such an event was common enough to pass 
unnoticed, but the curiosity of the two girls was 
roused. Mrs. Oliver, with the anxious puckers 
in her face growing deeper, followed her husband. 
He closed the door of the study, and set a chair 
for her with his accustomed tender politeness. 
Then he faced her, with his back to the fire. 

My dear,” he said, “ I have had a letter from 
St. Edmund this morning which amazed and 
grieved me, as I am sure it will you.” 

He took the letters out of his pocket and 
selected one, which he handed to her. 

“ My Dear Arthur [it ran] : I have heard 
from Jessie that Miss Halloran’s jianc^ is about 


2 28 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

to return, and this information has shown me that 
I was a fool to have left her when I did. I hope 
to be in Coolevara as soon as this reaches you, 
and to try my luck with the girl. Therefore 
I resign to you the parole under which you put 
me when you sent me away at Christmas. I 
won’t ask you not to think too badly of me ; you 
will think me an accursed scoundrel, but I can’t 
help it. I only feel that nothing but herself can 
stand between me and herself, and if she feels for 
me a tithe of what I feel for her, it is fortunate 
that no stronger barrier than an engagement ring 
stands between us. All the same, I am sorry for 
what you will think of 

“ Your very unworthy 

St. Edmund Hilliard.” 

Mrs. Oliver looked up from her reading with 
a horror-stricken face. 

“Oh, Arthur!” she gasped, “what is to be 
done ? Why, the unfortunate boy probably came 
by the very train that brought this.” 

“ The first thing to be done,” said her hus- 
band, “ is to try to intercept him before he sees 
the girl. My old influence may work with him, 
though I doubt it from that letter.” 


LOVE WILL FIND THE WAYT 229 

“ He won’t come here, Arthur ? ” 

“No,” responded Mr. Oliver grimly, “ he is not 
likely to do that. But unless his impatience has 
been too strong for us I may find him at the 
Western Arms. I’d better start at once. And 
of course you’ll say nothing to the children.” 

“ Oh, indeed no ! ” she answered. 

A few minutes later Mr. Oliver passed the 
dining-room windows, too absorbed to notice 
that his daughters were kissing hands to him, 
and took the winding road down the hill to 
Coolevara, leaving his wife to parry the eager 
curiosity of the girls. Mrs. Oliver really felt 
quite as shocked as if she had come face to face 
with sin. Her own maiden emotions had been 
kept in such check, and she was even yet so vir- 
ginally austere, that this undisciplined passion 
for another man’s property repelled as much as 
it grieved her. Woman-like, her condemnation 
was even severer for the girl, and she found 
herself thanking Heaven mentally that her 
daughters could not inspire such feelings or 
understand them. In her time the thoughts of 
a girl toward her lover had been so timid and 
so maidenly. 

Mr. Oliver reached the Western Arms, quite 


230 THE WAY OF A MAID. ’ 

warm after his quick walk in the keen air. Tim, 
the boots, met him at the door. Tim and Mr. 
Oliver were old friends. 

“ I was just sayin’ to the chambermaid,” began 
Tim, ^‘that we’d have Mr. Oliver over in no time 
wanst he got word Mr. Hilliard was in the town. 

‘ Don't be after taking his orders for a bed, 
woman, till you see,’ says I. ‘They’ll be carryin’ : 
him off bag and baggage to Cromartin, so they 
will.’ ” : 

“Where is Mr. Hilliard?” asked Mr. Oliver, i- 
interrupting the flow of talk. 

“ ’Deed then, I’m not sure he’s not gone out. 

I know he was talkin’ of goin’ out as soon as he 
had his chop taken.” 

“ Oh, I hope he isn’t gone out ! ” said Mr. 
Oliver disappointedly. 

“Just step into the drawing-room and I’ll see. 
Divil a wan ’ll come next or nigh you, for there’s 
only commercials in the house, an’ they don’t 
favour the drawing-room. Wirha, God be wid 
the good ould times ! ” 

Tim went off and left Mr. Oliver alone in the 
fine room that had seen many a hunt ball and 
assembly. The glories of Coolevara might be 
gone, but the stately room, with its finely fres- 


^^LOVE WILL FIND THE WAYT 231 

coed ceiling, its carved mantel-piece and wood- 
work of wine-red mahogony, kept its old-world 
dignity. Mr. Oliver knew the aspect of the 
room, and noted none of these things as he 
walked the long expanse of polished floor, in- 
wardly fuming. 

He had come back to the great fire-place when 
he heard the door open, and, wheeling about, he 
saw St. Edmund coming up the long room. He 
stood watching his approach with a stern eye, 
but he noted at the same time that the other 
man's face was set just as hard. 

“Well, St. Edmund," he said. 

“Well, Arthur," the other replied. 

They looked at each other as if measuring 
paces. Then the younger man leant forward, 
and impatiently kicked at a coal in the grate. 

“ I thought you would come, and I waited for 
you," he said. 

“ That was kind," responded Mr. Oliver drily. 

“For God’s sake, don’t sneer, Arthur," broke 
out his cousin irritably. “ Sneering won’t mend 
matters between you and me ! ’’ 

Mr. Oliver looked at him and felt his old 
affection stirring. “ What do you mean to do, 
St. Edmund?" he asked more gently. 


233 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


“ I am going to ask her to choose between me 
and that other man, to-day, this afternoon, now, 
as soon as you leave me.” 

“ If she says ‘ no ’ ? ” 

“If she says ^ no,’ ’’echoed the other, with a 

hard laugh, “ I shall But she will not say ‘ no.’ 

She will say ‘ yes.’ ” 

“You are very confident, St. Edmund.” 

“ I am. When I left her I was blind and a 
fool. I did not understand her. Now I under- 
stand her and mysdf, and we belong to each 
other. No people ever loved as she loves and I 
love.” 

“Yet she recalled her first lover.” 

“ She was angry with rhe,” said the other 
simply. 

“Well, my lad,” said Mr. Oliver, “ I suppose it 
is no use trying to stop you ? ” 

“None. If she were married and I loved her 
as I do I should still try to have her. It is the 
one kindness of Fate that things are no worse 
with her.” 

“You are talking wildly now, St. Edmund.” 

“ It is true, Arthur, all the same. I would try 
to reach her though earth and hell stood between 
us. Heaven might frustrate me. I don’t know 


**LOV£ WILL FIND THE WAYT 233 

much about Heaven, but there is no barrier across 
which I would not try to come to her.” 

“ I think what you say wicked, St. Edmund. 
Happily we are not often judged by our words.” 

“ I beg your pardon, Arthur. I should have 
remembered your feelings about such matters. 
But it is true all the same. You cannot under- 
stand how a man like me feels.” 

“ And the other man ? ” 

“ Let the other man look to himself ! ” said St. 
Edmund moodily. 

Mr. Oliver sighed. 

‘‘ I scarcely hope to turn you, St. Edmund. In 
the old days I could never have believed you 
the man to act like this. You must go your 
way, but I think yoiir way is neither right nor 
honourable.” 

“ It would be no honour to let her marry a man 
to whom she could never give the feeling she has 
given to me. You know nothing of it, Arthur. 
Why, my God, it makes me shudder to think that 
I might have come after she was married! I 
could not give up my happiness twice, Arthur.” 

I see that I need say no more,” Mr. Oliver 
said coldly. “ I might waste my breath on a 
great many words ineffectually. But you will 


234 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


understand that this makes things different be- 
tween you and me.” 

“ I understand,” said the other, flushing darkly. 

There was no pretence at a friendly parting 
between the two. Mr. Oliver, as he went away, 
said half sadly: 

“ The other man is on the sea by this. I 
should be sorry to have laid waste my neigh- 
bour’s paradise as you are seeking to do, St. 
Edmund.” 

There was no answer, and he. went out of the 
room very crestfallen. Tim noticed that he was 
in no mood for a chat, and let him pass with his 
kindly absent-minded good-day. 

If he could have looked back at the man he 
had left he would have realised how very in- 
effectual had been his remonstrances. As the 
door closed behind him Hilliard stretched himself 
as one who is freed from a burden. 

“ That is over,” he said, with a deep sigh of re- 
lief. And now for my Sweet ! ” 

He raced upstairs so jubilantly that Tim, listen- 
ing, was obliged to reconsider his lately formed 
decision ithat there was something gone wrong 
between Mr. Hilliard and Mr. Oliver. He laid 
the case later on before Rose, the chambermaid. 


*'LOVE WILL FIND THE WAYT 235 

“Women,” he said, “though deficient in 
raisonin’ powers, often jumps to an understanding 
of a thing where a- man may fail. Here’s Mr. 
Hilliard and Mr. Oliver has always been as thick 
as two thieves, beggin’ their pardons. An’ Mr. 
Hilliard comes in on the day mail an’ orders a 
chop an’ his bed, an’ hot fut on him comes Mr. 
Oliver and has a collogue wid him in the drawin’- 
room, all to their two selves. An’ then Mr. 
Oliver, that’s always so pleasant spoken, goes out 
lookin’ as puzzled as you like, an’ down-hearted. 
An’ then my bucko here goes singin’ up the stairs 
like a three-years-ould. I’d like to know what 
you make out of it. Miss Rose.” 

But Rose, being puzzled, answered with a 
cheerful impertinence. 

Hilliard presently swung out of the inn with 
“ the sun in his face,” as Tim afterward de- 
scribed it. The valley, when he had turned the 
road from Coolevara and began to descend into 
it, was full of the long afternoon sunshine and 
the singing of birds. Under the trees in the 
woods the primroses were coming out shyly, and 
jn the old orchard of a deserted house ^all daffo- 
dils were piercing their green sheaths. The 
branches of the trees had grown softly indefinite 


236 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

for the legion of little buds coming upon them, 
and the breath of the spring was in the air, warm 
and caressing; a wood dove was calling in the 
distance, softly, melancholy ; and the valley, into 
which the east wind never breathed, felt the sap 
stirring in every vein. The spring was early in 
here, though the winter yet lingered on the hills 
overhead. 

He went the familiar way with an immense 
happiness in his heart. A great part of the road 
he ran like any boy, and could have laughed and 
shouted aloud in his joy. The boyhood, too 
soon cut short in his case, had returned to him. 
The sealed fountains had begun to flow, the cur- 
rent to ripple and run. He had no misgiving at 
all. His one fear was lest he should not find his 
sweetheart alone. 

Mary opened the door to him and beamed all 
over her broad face. ^‘You’re kindly welcome, 
sir,” she said ; “ there's no one within but Miss 
Nora, but you’ll be welcome as flowers in May 
to her.” 

I hope so, Mary,” he said. He rapidly trans- 
ferred a coin to Mary’s palm. “ Don’t tell her it 
is I. I want to surprise her,” he said. 

“ I hope you’ll cheer her, sir,” said Mary, “for 


LOVE WILL FIND THE WAYF 237 

she has the neuralgy. Divil such a young lady 
ever I saw! She’s that mopey. You’d think her 
aunt and herself had changed places, for Miss 
Sylvy’s young again.” 

She ^an up to the door of Nora’s room and 
rapped sharply. “ A visitor for you, miss,” and 
was gone before any questions could be asked. 
Nora got up wearily from the bed, where she had 
been lying in a dull stupor. Three months ago 
her heart would have leaped at the announce- 
ment, but what visitor now could stir her heavy 
pulses. Before she ‘got so numb and sleepy she 
had been wondering if she could find strength 
to tell Jim when he came that she did not love 
him. The nearer his return came the more hope- 
less seemed to her the coil in which her feet were 
tangled. Oh, if she had never known that other 
man and the dangerous sweetness of love-making, 
how glad and without misgiving she would have 
felt to-day, for with Jim her affection had been 
equable, had burned with a steady, pleasant light 
that neither waxed nor waned. How fond she 
could be of Jim, she said to herself, if she need 
not marry him. What a dear brother and friend 
he would make. Then Mary’s knock at the door 
roused her to the light of day and the troubles 


238 THE WA Y OF A MAID. 

she must face. She got up in an impatient 
misery. 

When she went to the glass to arrange her dis- 
ordered curls she noticed how pinched and chilly 
she looked. Her cheeks had a wan, piteous look, 
and there were purple shadows under her eyes. 
No one had troubled about her. Miss Carew had 
been so absorbed in her lover — and for other 
people the neuralgia made sufficient excuse for 
pallor and heavy eyes. 

She certainly looked very unlike a happy girl 
awaiting her lover as she went downstairs. She 
turned the handle slowly. Her visitor was sure 
to be one of those tiresome Coolevara folk, for if 
it were Jessie, dear Jessie, she would have come 
upstairs unannounced. She . turned the handle 
and went in with that languid step. When she 
saw Hilliard she uttered just one happy little cry, 
and the roses came back to her cheeks in a flood 
tide; the next moment she was in his arms. 

He had had time to notice her heavy head and 
languid step. “ My darling, my sweetest, my lit- 
tle rose of the world, what has come to you? 
Have you been ill, my heart’s delight ? ” he whis- 
pered between his kisses, raining on lips and eyes 
and throat. 


LOVE WILL FIND THE WAYT 239 

I have been sad,” she whispered back, “but 
now you have come I shall never be sad any 
more.” 

It was just as he had said. Her passion for 
him was strong enough to overpower all the world 
besides. 

They were a long time together before they 
came back to earthly things. At last he lifted 
her head from his breast and said : “ When will 

you give yourself to me, my heaven? How soon, 
how soon ? for I shall not go away without you.” 

She pushed back her disordered hair and looked 
at him. Then she uttered a small cry of dismay. 
“There is Jim,” she said. “Oh, poor Jim, what 
shall I do when Jim comes home?” 

“ Poor devil ! ” said Hilliard magnanimously. 
“ We have treated him pretty badly between us.” 

“ I should not dare to meet him,” she said, 
holding off his kisses. “ He is so good, poor Jim! 
And Mrs. Hurley. What will they think? Oh, 
how can you care for so worthless a girl as 
I am?” 

He caught at her fingers and drew her arms 
again round his neck. 

“ It is another reason for hurrying on our mar- 
riage, sweetheart,” he whispered. 


240 THE IVAY OF A MAID. 

“But he will be here so soon,” she said, 
anxious-eyed at the thought. 

“ Leave it to me, my heart,” he said. “ I must 
carry you off from it all, if we have to make a run- 
away match.” 

“ Oh, not that ! ” 

“ Well, not if we can help it. How will your 
father take this, do you suppose?” 

“ I cannot say. He never cared for Jim, but 
he will think it bad of me all the same. Oh, how 
bad everyone will think me ! Poor, poor Jim, and 
Mrs. Hurley, who thought so much of me, and 
Eily, and Jessie, and everyone ! ” 

“Hush, my bird, my beauty! Isn’t our love 
worth it ? ” 

“ Oh, yes, yes ! ” she murmured, sinking on his 
breast. 

There was a step in the hall, and Nora sprang 
from his arms. 

“It is papa! What will he say?” she cried, 
wild with dismay. 

“Tell him I am here, sweetheart, and I will 
make things right with him. Leave us together 
for a while, and keep a strong heart.” 

She went out in the hall and met her father on 
the threshold. In a voice scarcely audible she 


LOVE WILL FIND THE WAYT 241 

whispered : “ Mr. Hilliard is here and wants to 

see you.” Then she fled from him upstairs. 
The old man looked after her, and then, with a 
broad light of satisfaction on his face, which he 
hastily repressed, he went into the room. 

Hilliard met him as he advanced. 

“ Mr. Halloran,” he said, “ I have a very 
strange communication to make to you, and the 
greatest favour to ask of you that one man 
could ask of another. Your daughter and I 
love each other, and I want you to consent to 
our marriage.” 

The old man looked at him slily from under 
his long white eyelashes. He was not going to 
betray his satisfaction. 

“ I understood that my daughter had already 
chosen a lover in her own rank of life, sir,” 
he said ; of her own faith and her own 
people.” 

“ That was all a mistake,” said Hilliard impa- 
tiently. Why, she was a child when he went 
away! No promise at such an age could bind 
her. And as for her faith, she will keep her faith, 
which I shall reverence in her. And I shall 
cherish her as no woman was ever cherished 
before.” 


242 THE WA V OF A MAID. 

“ I am for her happiness,” said the old man, 
with genuine feeling. “ I never wanted this 
Hurley marriage, but if I had seen her heart was 
in it. I’d have given in. If her heart is in you, 
sir, I consent, though it will be bitter to lose my 
only child.” 

But you will not lose her,” said Hilliard 
eagerly. 

The old man waved the words away as idle 
ones. He was little likely at his age to make 
many journeys to England, and he felt that Nora 
would shun Coolevara in the future. 

“ I know what you would say, sir,” he said, 
“ but I shall not trouble you. I am a very old 
man, and I must not be taken into account.” 

But you consent?” said Hilliard eagerly. 

Oh, yes, I consent,” said the other. “ I could 
not have hoped to be with her very long. You 
will want the marriage soon?” 

“ As soon as possible. We must be married 
before Dr. Hurley returns, and you will see the 
necessity of getting her away from the nine-days’ 
wonder.” 

“ Oh, aye ; I see it ! ” assented the old fellow. 
“ I’ll take her to London myself, and wait till you 
can be married.” 


^'LOVE WILL FIND THE WAYT 243 
You, Mr. Halloran ? ” 

“Yes, I. No one else — not even yourself, 
young sir — could care as I do for her happiness. 
I’d rather my little girl could have been married 
without the talk and the wonder; but I’ll shield 
her from it as well as a younger man could do. 
And afterward I’ll trust you. May God punish 
you, if you fail me ! ” 

“Amen!” said the other solemnly. 

But, after all, the old man had a vague dissatis- 
faction because, in this case, his boasted guineas 
counted for little. He had made himself well 
acquainted with Hilliard’s rent-roll, and it was the 
crumpled rose leaf in the royal bed of ambition 
fulfilled, that the dower of his daughter could 
count for little. He would like to have cast 
nobles for his girl, like the Beggar of Bethnal 
Green. 

It was settled that they should go quietly, so 
that none should know till thoy were gone, and 
in their isolation in the glen this was easy enough. 
Nora was called down to her father and lover 
presently. Her father kissed her with a silence 
she was grateful for. Hilliard watched her in a 
quiet state of bliss that was full for the time. 
They had a long, quiet evening, for Miss Sylvia 


244 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


had taken her captain to tea and a game of cards 
at the house of some friends in Coolevara. So 
they had plenty of time to make their arrange- 
ments. Hilliard was to leave next day and wait 
for them in Dublin, where they were to join him 
a day later for the journey to London. Hilliard 
was right when he said he understood Nora. He 
had no doubt of her passion for him, but he 
would not give her a quiet interval in which to 
fret. Before he left, they were a few minutes 
alone. He drew off Jim Hurley’s ring, which 
Nora had forgotten to remove, and laid it on the 
mantel-shelf. Nora let him do it with a drooping 
head. Then he took out of his pocket a ring case, 
and, opening it, displayed a diamond and sapphire 
ring of great beauty. 

“ I brought it from Bond Street, my sweet,” 
he said. “You see, I was very sure. I bought 
you a quite new one. There are plenty of heir- 
loom rings in the family, and it would have been 
conventionally the correct thing to have given 
you one of those. But life is to be so new 
and sweet with us that I did not feel I could 
give you a dead woman’s ring, sacred as it 
might be.” 

He put the ring on her finger and held it up 


LOVE WILL FIND THE WAY! 245 

for her to admire. She kissed it with ardent 
passion. Then she caught sight of the little 
discarded ring. 

“ Oh, poor Jim ! poor Jim ! she said, and hid 
her face in her lover’s breast. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


LOVE IS ENOUGH. 

As' may be imagined, there was much excite- 
ment created by these events in Coolevara and 
its neighbourhood. When it had leaked out that 
Mr. Hilliard had gone off by the Dublin mail in 
the morning, and that Nora and her father had 
“slipped off” by the evening mail, and that Mr. 
Hilliard and the old farmer’s heiress were to be 
married in London, there was much excited com- 
ment and a proportionate taking of sides. What 
“ Half Rome ” and “ The Other Half Rome ” 
said was as nothing compared to the rival fac- 
tions in Coolevara. There were those who said 
that “ ould Mick ” had laid his plans cleverly to 
catch the gentleman for his daughter, and others 
again who asked what Jim Hurley had been 
about, leavin’ the little girl to be picked up by 
the first man she tempted. Tim, the boots, re- 
ceived a good many treats for telling his story 
of the interview between Mr. Oliver and Mr. 
Hilliard, which grew in detail in the telling 

246 


as a 


LOVE IS ENOUGH. 


247 


snowball gathers snow in the rolling. The busi- 
ness pleasantly excited Tim. It reminded him 
of the good old days when abductions were 
everyday events ; when a gentleman no sooner 
fell in love with a lady than, if the powers were 
not propitious, he had her behind him on the 
saddle and pelting away with her to Dublin to be 
married. 

“ ’Twas meself got many a sovereign,” said 
Tim, at a change of horses; an’ many a time 
no sooner was they gone than up ’ud pelt the 
ould man, makin’ the sparks fly out o’ the stones 
as if he were Ould Nick himself. An’ wid the 
sovereign warm in my palm I’d point the wrong 
road: ‘ ’Twas that way they took, yer honour. 
Ride fast, yer honour, an’ ye’re sure to ketch up 
with them ! ’ An’ off he’d pelt, an’ meself and the 
stable boys holdin’ our sides wid the screeches 
we daren’t let out of us.” 

Mary was a person who would have been in 
even greater request than Tim if she had con- 
descended to meet the many approaches made to 
her. On Sunday morning many were the offers 
she received of company for a bit o’ the way 
home ; but Mary was not to be pumped. It was 
part of her queer code of honour to defend the 


248 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

secrets of the family with whom she was living, 
for the time, whatever came after. She ex- 
pressed her opinion pretty freely to Nora’s 
friends. 

“ In my opinion, men’s as like as two peas, 
an’ divil a man in this world’s worth waitin’ for. 
The bird in the hand’s my motto. An’ them 
that’s screechin’ over Miss Nora for makin’ her 
choice between two gentlemen, it’s little choice 
they ever had ; an’ it’s aisy to be strong when 
you’re not tempted.” 

“ Are you speakin’ of constancy, ma’am ? ” 
Mary said, in an acidulated voice, to a senti- 
mental little spinster who had expressed her 
indignation at Nora’s want of faith. “ Well, then, 
ma’am. I’d like to know who the divil you ever 
had to be constant to ! ” 

Though the person the most aggrieved in the 
matter, Mrs. Hurley, after the first shock of the 
revelation, began to make tender excuses in her 
own heart for the girl who had made a warm 
place there. She had received a tear blotted 
little note from the culprit herself, which was the 
first intimation of what had happened. John 
Hurley stormed. Even Eily came out of her 
aloofness to be amazedly contemptuous of the 


LOVE IS ENOUGH. 249 

heroine of such a scandal. Mrs. Hurley, though 
her breast bled for her boy and the sorrow he 
was coming home to, added nothing to the out- 
cry against the girl which for a time raged in 
her usually tranquil house. But by the time 
John Hurley was hardening into silence, and 
they had come to consider how the news was to 
be broken to Jim on his arrival, Mrs. Hurley 
began to plead for the sinner. 

Tm thinking I wouldn’t be too hard on her, 
John. It wasn’t a deliberate falseness with her. 
It was just that she wanted the weeny bit of will 
to keep her straight, poor child ! I often thought 
of her poor young mother, when she used to 
cuddle up beside me, with her winsome ways; 
poor Mary, who hadn’t the power to go against 
them that gave her to an old man. I’m thinking 
our boy left her overlong for the strength that 
was in her.” 

John Hurley looked at her admiringly. 

“ ’Tis yourself is the kind-hearted woman, 
asthoreen. But don’t ask me to forgive that 
little creature yet ; not while our boy’s still 
thinking of her as his own.” 

'‘Jim would have been good to her,” sighed 
Jim’s mother, “ and he’d have had the will and 


250 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


the sense for two. God grant the man she’s 
taken before him may be a wise choice ! ” 

Upon my word, Mary,” said her husband, 
“ I can’t go all the way with you. I’m too sore 
over the treatment our boy’s received, with 
Michael Halloran, the thundering old villain, 
conniving. And I think as bad of her coming 
here and getting round you with her soft ways. 
Why, it’s not a month since she left off coming.” 

“•She didn’t know her mind, the creature,” said 
Mrs. Hurley, who, poor woman, had really given 
up more sweet illusions than anyone guessed, 
and had resigned the pleasant, warm thoughts 
of Jim’s marriage, and, by and bye, Jim’s little 
baby, to comfort her for the lost babyhood of 
her two nuns. 

The father and mother went off to break the 
news to him at Southampton. On the way John 
Hurley suggested a possibility which had been 
troubling his mind. 

“ Mary achora. I’ve been thinking likely as not 
the boy ’ll turn back, and ’tis possible it might be 
the best thing for him. He won’t care to return 
to the old place with this thing fresh in people’s 
minds, and everyone gaping at him to see how 
he takes it. I’m thinking, honey, if he chooses 


LOVE IS ENOUGH. 


251 


to go back to the hard work we won’t try to 
persuade him against his will.” 

A great blankness of disappointment came 
over his wife’s face. She looked out of the win- 
dows of the train at the grassy Warwickshire 
fields, already faintly golden with the promise of 
May, and not seeing them. He took her hand 
and waited for an answer. After a time she 
spoke in a very low voice : 

“Very well, John; I won’t persuade him 
against his will.” 

But Jim Hurley, when he had heard that he 
was jilted, showed no sign of a desire to return 
to his post. In the first pain and trouble of 
breaking the news to him his father suggested 
that if that were his wish he need not fear oppo- 
sition, but the young man held up his head 
proudly. 

“ No, father,” he said ; “ I’ll spend my leave 
with you and my mother. You’ll want me all 
the more now Eily is gone. You needn’t fear 
that I’ll think overmuch or overlong of another 
man’s wife. It is only a question of breaking 
myself of a habit.” 

And whatever wound Jim Hurley had received 
he hid it from all eyes. He faced Coolevara un- 


252 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

dauntedly, and the most ill-natured could not 
point with amusement at the dark, square- 
shouldered fellow who held his head so high as 
he walked up the church at ten o’clock mass on 
Low Sunday. When he came in there was a 
flutter of excitement, but there was nothing re- 
vealed by that strong profile, and the sleek, 
cropped head bent low above his prayer-book. 
After mass he escorted his mother from her seat 
with a tender carefulness, and waited with her 
outside the door while she held court for her 
gossips. He had allayed her fears that his heart 
was broken, and she was able to display him 
almost as proudly to the old neighbours who had 
known him from the cradle, as if there was not 
that galling thing pushed out of sight in his 
consciousness. No one guessed what those days 
cost Jim Hurley, and how in the quietness of 
the night he raged and suffered as the primitive 
man in the civilised creature will when his mate 
has been stolen from him. He carried no traces 
of his struggles, except in a grimmer determi- 
nation about his strong mouth and a weary 
look he sometimes allowed upon his face, 
when his mother’s tender eyes were not watch- 
ing him. 


LOVE IS ENOUGH. 


253 


The old friends began to rally round him. 
Nora’s aunt wrote a very appealing note to 
Mrs. Hurley: 

I can’t think Jim will want to hear of me or 
mine [she wfote] ; but I feel bitterly how he’s 
been treated, for I love him as if he were my 
own son.” 

If anyone could have seen Miss Sylvia as she 
wrote at a little Indian desk, the long ago gift of 
the lover so miraculously restored to her, they 
would have noticed that she blushed and sighed 
as she read over her own impulsive words. If 
she and Richard could have married in that 
sweet past she might have had a son in young 
manhood by this time. But that was all over, 
and they could only look forward to going 
down to the grave, hand in hand, a pair of old 
lovers. The sweetness of long ago was the 
sweetness of the spring, the late sweetness the 
sweetness of autumn, yet she was devoutly 
thankful, and bloomed in her restored happi- 
ness like a pale rose that takes shelter under the 
leaves of October. 

Mrs. Hurley answered her at once ; 


254 


THE WA Y OF A MAID. 


“ Jim would like dearly to see you. Come 
and bring Captain Weston. You will find no 
difference in any of us to you.” 

So one evening or two later, Miss Carew and 
her captain arrived at Stone Pines — Miss Sylvia 
with a fluttering heart. Her fears, however, were 
quite allayed by the warmth of her reception. 
Mrs. Hurley took her into a warm embrace, and 
Jim Hurley, coming forward to meet her, took 
up her slender mittened fingers and kissed them 
with a tender gallantry. 

Afterward, when she was taking off her bonnet 
upstairs, Mrs. Hurley .gladdened her timorous 
heart. She held Miss Sylvia’s slender gray-clad 
figure away from her and looked at her criti- 
cally. 

“ Upon my word, Sylvia Carew,” she said, 
^‘you’re growing a younger and prettier woman 
every day. I’m not surprised at the way that 
man worries after you. You’re a sight pret- 
tier than long ago, when all those young ones 
pushed you into a corner. And you’ve kept 
your figure : not a pinched, scrawny figure un- 
becoming a woman of your age, but a handsome, 
personable figure.” 


LOFE IS ENOUGH. 


255 


Miss Sylvia blushed with delight, and then 
murmured apologetically : 

“ I feel so young, Mary ; if it weren’t for the 
quietness I’d say I felt as young as the youngest. 
You see my happiness has come to me late and 
my heart has kept young waiting for it.” 

Another visitor of Jim Hurley’s was Mr. Oliver. 
He and John Hurley had met at a fair and 
travelled home together. Mr. Oliver had asked 
for the other’s companionship. Soon after the 
mare had set out at a swinging pace on the road 
homeward he came out with what was on his 
mind. 

“ I’d like that boy of yours to understand the 
grief I felt about that matter, and how the mis- 
chief was wrought without my knowing till it 
was past my power to undo.” 

“The lad knows it, Mr. Oliver, without tell- 
ing,” said John Hurley heartily. “ He knows, 
and we know, that you took the business sorely 
to heart. You’re not the man to have hand, act, 
or part in injury to a neighbour or a neighbour’s 
child.” 

“ Thank you,” said the other simply. “ I’ve 
been thinkiilg of looking in to see your boy one 
of these days, but hesitated lest I should not be 


256 the way of a maid. 

welcome. I hear he is a lad for any father to 
be proud of.’' 

He is that !'' said John Hurley, with grati- 
fied pride. 

A few days later Mr. Oliver called in at Stone 
Pines one morning, and fraternised easily with 
Jim Hurley. There was no word of rapproche- 
merit between the two men. Each remembered 
as their hands met — the one that his kin had 
brought sorrow to this capable-looking young 
man, the other that the ruddy-cheeked, white- 
haired man facing him was of the blood of him 
who had stolen away his promised wife, but 
neither faltered in cordiality. In a surprisingly 
short time they were on the most easy footing. 
Mr. Oliver sat in the big chair opposite Mrs. 
Hurley, who was knitting and listening with 
placid, motherly pride to the conversation in 
which her son took a prominent part. That 
young man was perched on the table swingihg 
his legs easily, and, as his face lit up in his eager- 
ness on the theories he was expounding to an 
intelligent and interested listener, no one could 
have imagined that he was a man but lately jilted. 
Jim Hurley had a strong hold on the things of 
life, and no matter, intimately concerning himself. 


LOVE IS ENOUGH. 257 

could turn him aside from the truth he saw 
ahead, and the work he believed to be awaiting 
his hand. 

Michael Halloran did not trouble himself 
greatly about what anyone might be thinking of 
him. He came back after Noras marriage as 
grimly as he had gone, and kept his pride and 
satisfaction in his own heart. His surly bearing 
rather ranged people against him and on the side 
of the Hurleys. If he was less popular, he 
scarcely noticed. He had never gone in for 
popularity, but had strode over the way to his 
wealth not caring greatly if he at times obliter- 
ated a neighbour's landmark. Nothing had 
greatly concerned him since his wife’s death, 
since the sickening disillusionment he had had 
when he realised that she had died of her mar- 
riage with him, except his little girl. And now 
she was safe, set on high above what envy or 
malice could do ; she was the equal of any of the 
proud country folk who looked on themselves as 
of superior clay to that of which his like was 
fashioned. He used to have ambitious dreams of 
what he would have done if he had had a son 
instead of a daughter ; but his little girl had grati- 
fied his ambition as it was scarce likely any boy 


258 the way of a maid. 

would have done. In his own heart he said his 
Nunc D intit t is. He was satisfied that the child 
should be out of his reach : he had no thought of 
making Nora frequent visits to London, which 
his daughter hoped for and his son-in-law urged. 
Though he was so strong, he was very old, and 
he felt convinced that he would go suddenly, and 
not decay slowly like other men. Once he had 
set his house in order, he cared little now how 
soon the summons might come. 

To his sister-in-law he offered no information. 
He had a feeling of coldness toward her because 
he guessed, by her silence, at the disapproval she 
was too gentle to express. He asked her one 
day suddenly when her marriage would take 
place. She hesitated a moment, and then stam- 
mered that she did not like to leave him alone. 
He laughed shortly. 

“You’ve kept that man waiting long enough. 
Don’t keep him any longer for an old log like 
me. Mary will look after me for the time 
that’s left, and you’ll be in the neighbourhood, 
I suppose.” 

He said as much to Richard Weston, who, in- 
deed, had been chafing over the delay. Richard 
had found a cottage for his bride near Culinmore, 


LOVE IS ENOUGH. 


259 


where his boyhood had been spent. At Culin- 
more the river from Coolevara widens into the 
sea, and from the cottage a view of harbour and 
bay and lighthouse spread delightfully before the 
eye. Captain Weston was rich enough to retire 
from the merchant service and set up his little 
household gods — of whom Neptune must have 
been one — on the sea-strand. 

But all this time Nora was heeding little what 
that far-away, half-forgotten world of Coolevara 
was thinking or saying. She was living in para- 
dise — the paradise vouchsafed on earth to happy 
lovers. In those days her conscience smote her 
not at all : her world was in her husband and the 
hidden rose-garden in which they were spending 
the early days of their married life. That was a 
miraculous spring — a spring in which the golden 
summer set in, a flood-tide in mid-April, and 
bloomed to the very threshold of the winter. 
Unaccustomed folk sweltered and panted in the 
tropical glory, but the new Mrs. Hilliard bloomed 
in it like a little scarlet flower long exiled from its 
native air. 

Hilliard had postponed taking his wife abroad 
till they had grown used to their happiness. He 
hated to think of hotels and steamboats and 


26 o 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


trains for the scenes of their early love dream. 
He had taken this cottage in a leafy country lane 
for the summer, had furnished it daintily, and 
installed as sole domestic an old servant, who had 
loved him from his cradle. Mrs. Summers was 
proud of the trust reposed in her by her master, 
and perfectly understood that he could bear no 
other servant about him during his honeymoon. 
She was an admirable cook, and, with the aid of 
a village girl who came in daily to assist her, the 
little manage went smoothly and daintily. 

No one knew where Hilliard had taken his 
bride. His letters went to his club, and were 
re-addressed, but even at his own stately home, 
though everything was swept and garnished in 
preparation for the new mistress, they never knew 
when the master would bring her. 

In the garden of the cottage all the fruit trees 
blossomed a month before their time in rose and 
silver. They stood up fairily fine the night that 
bride and bridegroom came home. “ See, my 
queen,” said Hilliard, with a boy’s impassioned 
ardour, “ your bridal flowers. May has flung 
them to April in honour of our marriage.” 

That is a rich, silent country, hidden in belts 
of woodland. By day there was scarcely a sound, 


LOFE IS ENOUGH. 


261 


save the multitudinous noises of the country, the 
lowing of cattle, the bark of a distant dog, the 
moaning of cushat doves, the songs of birds, and 
the hum of insects. The mornings were wonder- 
ful, with the first thrush singing in the dark hours 
before dawn his miraculous song of love and wed- 
ding. And then one soft, piercing whistle after 
another to answer him, and lo! suddenly, the 
springing of the day out of the east and the full 
choir of the birds. Every tall tree was a world of 
them, and a nest for every gold-green leaf, and all 
the world in love and in flower. 

They did not wander far from their cottage 
garden, which lay golden all day and smoked at 
evening under the mists of heat. Wallflowers 
and stocks heavily scented the air, and after a 
week or so, the hawthorn was out, and all the 
leafy country fumed like a censer. They had 
their breakfast under the shade of spreading trees 
in the garden, and squirrels swung overhead, and 
rabbits peeped from under big rhubarb leaves and 
then scurried away with a flash of white fur. For 
long no gardener had struggled there against the 
encroaching steps of the sweet, bountiful Nature. 

Nora came to her garden breakfast in wonder- 
ful, cool garments of lawn and linen, in which she 


262 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


looked so adorable that her husband could not 
eat for gazing at her. Her changes of apparel 
were a constant delight to him. 

“Wait, my beauty,” he would say, “ till we get 
to Paris, and you shall have your fill there of 
your pretty varieties.” 

But neither was in a hurry to get to Paris, or 
to end this sweet magical time. All day they 
wandered, hand in hand, through the gardens, 
and by the pond where there was one white 
swan, or sat where the wide trees made them a 
green-house. Under the shade of such boun- 
teous beech and elm as Nora had not known in 
Ireland, she sat through golden hours in such a 
green light as there might be in the heart of the 
sea. Her husband lay in the grass at her feet 
and read poetry to her, or lapsed into silence, 
with his head against her knee, while her fingers 
crept through his hair. 

Then the nights of full moon. There had 
been a faint sickle the night they came home, 
driving through leafy lanes while the west sky 
was yet dimly green and orange. Nora could 
never forget that drive, though it was shadowy 
in her memory as if she had but dreamt it, or it 
had happened in another life — the drive through 


LOVE IS ENOUGH. 


263 


the night shadows and the silver mists, with all 
the world drenched in dew and perfume and 
earth a Garden of Eden. When Mrs. Summers, 
at the threshold of the cottage garden, addressed 
her first by her married name she seemed to 
awaken from that dream to a reality, if possible, 
more exquisite. Her heart leaped as she realised 
her wifehood, and sickness, and death, and pain, 
and remorse seemed as far away as from that 
first man and woman before the snake had en- 
tered into their paradise. Certainly, what Coole- 
vara said mattered little to Nora Hilliard, and even 
her wronged lover had no place in her thoughts. 

There was a night when a full moon sailed 
over their garden. They could see far away the 
river with its silver mists. Now and again 
came, through the silence, the harsh whirring 
cry of the corncrake — the voice of the summer. 
He had come from Egypt with the spring to woo 
and marry, and build his house between aisles of 
dog daisies and brown meadow grass. The air 
was sweeter than honey, and the last bird had 
sung his latest song and was asleep till the dawn. 
Through the open window there was a pleasant 
glimpse of a lamplit room, but the two lovers 
lingered out of doors. 


264 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

Hilliard knelt on the ground, with one arm 
around his wife’s slender waist. He looked with 
passion at her face, glimmering in the moonlight. 

“ My dearest,” he sighed, “ how lovely you 
are ! And after all my desert life, how exqui- 
sitely God has blessed me in giving me you ! ” 

He knelt up and took her face between his 
hands. 

My damask rose, kiss me,” he said, “ or I 
shall die of love ! ” 

She yielded herself to his kisses, sighing with. 
rapture. Then they were silent for a while, 
leaning to each other. 

“ Oh, what a heavenly night,” she sighed again, 
“ and how glorious the moon is ! Do you smell 
the roses, darling? There, on that bush, they 
are all opening.” 

I smell the perfume of your hair,” he said, 
with his face against her cheek. 

“Oh, what is that?” she said, as in the high 
moonlight a bird began to sing; thrilling, pene- 
trating ; a very wonder of yearning and passion. 
It seemed to her like the disembodied voice of 
her own heart. 

“It is the nightingale, my sweet,” he answered. 
“ Listen, for soon the woods will be full of the 


LOFE IS ENOUGH. 265 

nightingale’s^song. He is the bird of love, you 
know.” 

Earth has only one paradise, and happy are 
they who enter at its gates. And within its gar- 
den spaces life blooms as a rose of many leaves. 
When God spake His sentence on the first man 
and woman He turned not away His face so as 
to forbid them love. There was never a work of 
His hands in the garden of life bloomed like 
that. But when they passed out weeping before 
the fiery sword they did not realise that they 
bore that with them into the desert which, for a 
season, should make the desert blossom like a 


rose. 


CHAPTER XV. 


“SHALL I, WASTING IN DESPAIR/’ 

Sylvia Carew was married one June morning 
by the old friend who had promised to bless her 
marriage twenty years ago. Her lover knelt with 
her at the altar without any division of heart or 
faith between them ; and, if less ardent, their joy 
was scarcely less sweet than that of the young 
lovers who had taken their fate in their hands 
two months earlier. And Nora was scarcely a 
sweeter bride than the elder woman, in her deli- 
cate, half-faded beauty. Coolevara Chapel was 
thronged to see this romantic marriage, though it 
took place after early mass, and Father Phelan 
was heard to twit many fair members of his con- 
gregation afterward upon their new-found devo- 
tion. There was no doubt Miss Carew’s marriage 
was a popular one, and a good many maids and 
matrons shed tears over the late union of those 
two faithful hearts. 

Miss Carew had braced herself up to write to 
her niece a good while before this. Indeed, her 


266 


SHALL /, WASTING IN DESPAIR." 267 

gentle indignation on Jim’s behalf had never 
made her quite hard where orTe of the culprits 
was concerned. She wrote a letter, tenderly 
thought over, so that nothing should seem like a 
reproach. To express disapproval of a marriage 
after it was made would have been abhorrent to 
her, and she was very careful to conceal her still 
smouldering indignation against Nora’s husband. 
She prayed night and morning that he might take 
care of her, and that there might never be any 
shadow on their love. Nora, in reply to her let- 
ter, had written her one that brought tears to her 
eyes, it was so full of her new-found happiness 
and of love and praise for her husband. Miss 
Sylvia had a tenderly romantic heart, that was 
quick to sympathise with all true lovers. She 
longed now that there might have been no wrong 
to another in this priceless love her little Nora 
had found. 

She rejoiced more heartily than anyone, except 
perhaps his mother, that Jrm Hurley wore his 
willow so bravely. He seemed to have brought 
a certain amount of new life into Coolevara. 
Coolevara is not noted for eligible young men, 
or, indeed, ineligible. The bachelors drift off to 
Dublin or Cork, and there is a legend that an 


268 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


imported young gentleman had once to share his 
attentions between twenty young women at a 
dance, where he was the sole male. So Nora 
Halloran’s discarded swain made a little flutter in 
the hearts of the girls, and his presence was the 
occasion of many a little dance and picnic which 
else had not been thought of. 

It was part of the young fellow’s simplicity of 
character that he never felt himself too fine for 
those good people he was brought up among. 
He was genuinely ready to enjoy himself with 
the pretty girls and chat with the elders, even if 
they had no glimpse into the world of thought 
in which he was at home. His apparent pleasure 
in the chatter of Kates and Marys often set 
his poor mother’s heart beating with hope that 
he would marry and settle down at home. But 
all unknown to her, her son’s ambitions were 
soaring far beyond Coolevara, and he was al- 
ready in touch with a world which Coolevara 
only hears of through the newspapers. Old men 
high in his profession had taken note of some 
of his theories, and his articles in a high-class 
medical journal were coming to be read and dis- 
cussed with attention and respect. During this 
holiday time he had not relinquished his work. 


SHALL /, WASTING IN DESPAIRT 269 

He read and wrote a |[ood deal, and found much 
consolation in his work. Further, he occasionally 
took a case for Dr. Carmody, the dispensary doc- 
tor, and gave that hardworked official a little 
respite. He was in love with his profession, and 
would have been well content, at any time, to 
sacrifice a night’s sleep in order to give a patient 
a little relief. It was to be feared that if Jim set 
up against Dr. Carmody, the latter gentleman 
would have had small chance of beating his 
young rival out of the field. The women espe- 
cially liked his straight, confident manner and the 
direct gaze of his eyes, which seemed to keep 
nothing back from them. Jim thoroughly ab- 
horred the small profes'sional manner which, with 
a great assumption of mystery and profundity, 
scared nervous patients half out of their wits. 

Still Jim Hurley would have been rather 
starved for intellectual society if it were not for 
the intimacy that by degrees sprang up between 
him and the Olivers. Mr. Oliver’s visit had 
ended with a cordial invitation to lunch, which 
the young man could not refuse without un- 
graciousness. He went, and, rather to his amaze- 
ment, enjoyed himself uncommonly. He liked 
Mrs. Oliver greatly, and, once he had got over 


2 70 the way of a maid. ' 

her slight consternation at having yet another 
Papist received on friendly terms by her family, 
her great kindness asserted itself, and her manner 
to her guest was almost caressing in its kindness, 
for the thought of the injury done him by one of 
their kin still lay heavily at her heart. 

He admired both girls, and appreciated their 
thorough air of breeding, but the unconventional 
Jessie interested him the most. Her views were 
so fresh and original, and she was so keenly alert 
about intellectual matters, that he felt her a com- 
rade at once, and found himself talking to her as 
he would to a brilliant boy. Between whiles he 
was greatly amused at the amazement her social 
departures caused to her mother and sister, and 
the scarcely concealed pride and pleasure of her 
father in her. , He used to think in those early 
days that it was a pity she was not born a boy, 
she was so frank and breezy and simple. Yet he 
liked her feminine ways, too ; the musical tones 
of her voice, her bright eyes, and ruffled bronze 
hair, and the clear, fresh look she carried in her 
serge frock and spotless linen collars and cuffs. 
She was so very different from the girl who had 
wounded and cast him off that he could look at 
her with pleasure, untouched by the pain of 


SHALL /, WASTLNG IN DESPAIR:' 271 

memory. A softer woman in laces and velvets, 
with faint perfumes about her arf^ little coaxing 
ways, might have recalled that other too sharply. 
But here was a girl at the other end of the com- 
pass from Nora, although quite womanly enough 
to appeal more to a man than the pleasantest lad 
could. 

He often wondered how long Jessie would bear 
the sweet, narrow ways of her home. Her char- 
acter had been developing rapidly of late, and 
she seemed to chafe, though with never-failing 
good-humour, at the constant restraints put upon 
her by her mother. Once she remonstrated jocu- 
larly in Jim’s presence, when her mother uttered 
a horrified exclamation at some of her heresies. 

“ Sweet mother,” she said ; “ father says just 
as revolutionary things every day, and yet you 
and May never mind.” 

“Don’t be implicating me in your sins, Jess,” 
said her father comically. 

“ Your father is always right, Jessie,” said Mrs. 
Oliver, with her little dignified air of rebuke, 
“but it doesn’t follow that a little girl like 
you, with no experience, should share his 
views.” 

“ What in the captain ’s but a choleric word ” 


272 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


whispered Jessie to her next neighbour, who hap- 
pened to be Jim Hurley. 

After that visit of his Jessie brought up again 
her request, which her mother had already re- 
fused many times, for permission to write to 
Nora. In her first shock, at what she took to be 
the girl’s unmaidenly duplicity, Mrs. Oliver had 
forbidden further correspondence between Jessie 
and her friend. Now again, Jessie, who had 
learnt the virtues of persistency, re-opened the 
question. 

“ Dear little mother,” she said, when are 
you going to give me leave to write to Nora? 
You see she is a sort of a cousin now, and though 
she did behave rather badly I don’t like to seem 
so poor a friend as to be willing to give her up.” 

“ I thought we had settled that matter, Jessie,” 
said her mother, looking up from the letter she 
was writing. 

And why should you wish to write to her, 
Jessie,” said May, intervening; “after her under- 
hand and unladylike conduct, I can’t imagine.” 

“You two dear people,” said Jessie, with an air 
of desperation, “ you both want to pour the 
whole world into your special moulds. And as 
for you. May, — I won’t include you, mother dear, 


SHALL 7 , WASTING IN DESPAIRT 273 

lest you think it disrespect, — you are like a gosling 
in a rut. Your rut is your world.” 

“Jessie!” said Mrs. Oliver, greatly scandalised. 
“ Your sister is quite right, and it might be as 
well, Jessie, if you were as well content to remain 
within the safety of bounds.” 

“ Yes, dear mother,” answered Jessie humbly, 
“ for then I should shock you less. I fear I shall 
be always shocking you, for I can't alter my 
nature.” 

“ Dear child ! ” said her mother, with renewed 
tenderness, while May spoke out of her corner: 

“You are a great deal better, brighter, and 
braver than I am, Jess, but the rut is at least 
safe.” 

“Well, mother dear,” sighed Jessie, “you 
can't go on ignoring Nora and St. Edmund for- 
ever. You know you're fond of St. Edmund. I 
think myself they couldn't help it. I know Nora 
tried to be true to her troth, but I don’t see my- 
self anything but the most conventional virtue in 
keeping the m^re letter of your word when your 
heart has already broken the spirit of it.” 

She gave up the effort at that moment, re- 
solving to renew it as soon as possible. 

She, too, found Jim Hurley’s society a great 


274 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

boon. There was little society in Coolevara, ex- 
cept that of old ladies, all of intensely conserva- 
tive views and very low church in religion, and a 
few people who had not been estranged by Mr. 
Olivers friendliness with the tenants, but who 
lived at long distances away. Jessie met them at 
the meets or the hunt ball, and sometimes there 
was an interchange of civilities, a luncheon, or a 
dinner party, or in summer a tennis party, with a 
lamentable absence of the male sex. But in this 
wider circle, too, the thought was attenuated, the 
interests of the most parochial. Jessie enjoyed 
Jim Hurley’s talk even more than she had en- 
joyed St. Edmund’s, for the latter had had no 
enthusiasm about his subjects, while the young 
doctor was intenselj/^ eager in his reserved way. 

There was a day when the two met and walked 
together, and Jessie confessed to the young man’s 
sympathetic ears her desire for a wider sphere of 
life than any she was likely to find at Cromartin. 

“ Only for the mother I would do something 
very revolutionary,” she said. I would go off 
and study medicine and make a career for myself. 
Father would help me, for father is very broad- 
minded, but mother would break her heart. I 
often think May and I will live here to become 


••SHALL /, WASTING IN DESPAIRT 275 

two snuffy old maids. I’ve thought of getting 
round mother by finding a vocation to become 
medical missionary to the Zenanas of India. But 
I don’t think distributing tracts to the, poor 
things would be much in my line.” 

She laughed out, showing a line of little white 
teeth. Jim Hurley laughed too, half with plea- 
sure, for she looked bright and sweet in her 
summer gown of pink cambric, which suited her 
brown face. 

“You don’t look much like a snuffy old maid, 
at all events. Miss Jessie,” he said. 

After that their friendship grew and throve. 
No element of consciousness crept into it, and 
Jim Hurley grew to feel for the girl who talked 
her frank confidences to him much the same 
grave, elder affection he might have had for a 
charming boy. The Olivers looked on and were 
quite satisfied with this open friendship. Mrs. 
Hurley noticed that her boy was fond of going to 
Cromartin, and felt a misgiving in her heart lest 
there should be fresh trouble in store for him. 
Jessie Oliver had been to see her once or twice 
with her father, and Mrs. Hurley had decided that 
she was good and very pleasant. But she would 
not have liked for her boy a marriage with one 


276 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

alien to him in creed and traditions. She did 
not herself know anything about friendships be- 
tween young men and women, yet watching her 
boy’s unconscious air and cheerful manner she 
hoped for the best, hoped that presently he would 
be able to go back to his work with no sharper 
pang at parting than he would feel in leaving her 
and his father, Away from this fear she had 
reason to be grateful for her son’s friendship for 
the Olivers, for she had begun to discern the fact 
that the old friends and the kindly neighbours 
had somehow been left far behind by her son, 
cordial as he was with them. 

Summer waxed and waned, and in September 
Jim Hurley was to go. Jessie bemoaned his 
approaching departure so publicly that anyone 
anxious about the state of her heart would have 
been quite reassured. As the time grew near he 
was more and more at Cromartin, and cordial and 
kindly were the regrets of all as the day of his 
departure approached. 

It was his last day at home, and his evening 
was to be sacred to his father and mother. He 
had premised the Cromartin folk to come in the 
afternoon to say good-bye. Mrs. Oliver an*d 


SHALL 7 , WASTING IN DESPAIRS 277 

May had a visit to pay and Mr. Oliver was re- 
ceiving the Michaelmas rents in his office. Jessie 
remained at home in case Jim Hurley should 
come before her mother could get back to tea. 
Her last word, as she saw her mother and May 
off from the hall door, was a promise to entertain 
him and keep him till they came home. 

So it was that when Jim Hurley was shown 
into the drawing-room, with the fire leaping and 
sparkling, there was only Jessie and Codger to 
receive him. Jessie got up from the hearthrug, 
where, very contrary to her habit, she had been 
sitting doing nothing. Jessie felt flat and dull at 
the prospect of losing her friend, and told him so 
when he had settled himself in the low chair he 
most affected. 

“ I should be an ungrateful fellow," responded 
the man, with feeling, “ if I too did not hate to 
say good-bye to you and this hospitable house." 

“Oh, you are all right!" said Jessie. “You 
are going back to that wonderful Eastern world 
and your engrossing work among those strange 
people, while I," — she clasped her hands behind 
her head and gazed mournfully at the ceiling, — “ I 
shall be strangling here in this mild air, where 
one only exists, not lives." 


278 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


“I shall come back, Jessie,” said the man 
gravely. It was the first time he had called her 
by her name, but neither noticed that he had 
done so. 

I don’t know,” said Jessie despondently. 

“ So many things may happen. You will become 
famous and will forget us.” 

“I am not likely to forget you, Jessie. In 
those first days after I came home, those days 
when I had to fight my hurt out of sight, I could 
not have hoped for such a wholesome sweetness 
as your friendship has proved.” 

Jessie looked up at him with softened eyes. 

I am very glad of that, Jim,” she said simply. 

He had stood up on the hearthrug facing her. ' 
She, too, came out of her low chair and stood 
beside him, one elbow on the mantel-piece, 
gazing at him. 

“You would be the best little comrade man 
could desire, Jessie,” he said again. “Perhaps, 
when I come back, some happy fellow will 
have annexed you, and I shall be forbidden to 
think of you again as my dear little friend and 
sister.” 

“Oh, hush!” she said very low. “You must 
not say such things.” 


SHALL T, WASTING IN DESPAIRT 279 

She turned away from him, her heart full of an 
unexpressed chagrin. 

“Jessie,” he said suddenly, “there is a world 
of difficulty between us, but supposing — suppos- 
ing — I had asked you to be my best friend and 
helper, I wonder what you would have said.” 

She flushed hotly for a minute and then be- 
came herself again. “ I should have said that no 
difficulty could count if you were really sure you 
wanted me.” 

She held out two frank hands to him. 

“Jessie!” he said unbelievingly, “do you 
mean that ? ” 

“ I mean whatever you mean,” she said, look- 
ing at him with a shy and tender air. 

“ Dear Jessie,” he said, drawing her nearer by 
her unresisting hands. “ But your people? We 
are a world apart in creed ; almost in race.” 

“Your people shall be my people,” she mur- 
mured ; “ your God my God 1 ” 

He looked at her with a light breaking over 
his grave face. “You are too good to give your- 
self to a man who is yet bleeding inwardly from 
the wound dealt him by another woman.” 

“If I have your trust and your faith,” she 
replied proudly, “ I can wait for your love.” 


28 o 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


He drew her to him and kissed her; the 
gravest kiss of betrothal. 

“ And your father, Jess; when shall I speak to 
him ? ” 

. “ Not yet,” she said. “ I will tell them to- 
night, and come to-morrow morning to him for 
your answer. But whatever that may be, mine 
is unchanged. You must go back to India and 
finish your work, and were your absence to be 
ten times as long I should wait, with the help 
of God.” 

She said the last words solemnly, for even then 
she thought of death — that is in the hands of 
God. Change she didn’t fear. 

When May and Mrs. Oliver returned home 
Jim Hurley had gone. He had promised to give 
all the time he could to his mother, Jessie said, 
but he would come round in the morning. 
Jessie was distraite^ and heard their little bits of 
news with the utmost carelessness. After tea 
she went away to her own room, and did not 
appear till dinner-time. At dinner she was 
nervously gay, for the coming disclosure was 
lying heavily on her mind. Her father looked at 
her once or twice rather anxiously. He guessed 
she was ill at ease. 


“ SHALL /, WASTING IN DESPAIRT 281 

After dinner they gathered about the fire, 
which was pleasant these damp evenings. They 
were quieter than usual, for Jessie’s perturbation 
affected the little circle, which she usually kept 
bright and gay. After a time Jessie got up and 
sat by her father. Brave as she was, she felt 
nervous almost to tears. She rubbed her cheek 
against his coat-sleeve, and he, looking up from 
his newspaper, turned to her fondly. 

“What is it, old woman? ” he said. 

Jessie answered in a voice that gained steadi- 
ness as she went on. “ Father, dear,” she said, 
“ I want you to be better to me than you ever 
were in your life, and to ask mother to be good 
to me, too.” 

“ Why, Jess ? ” said her father, alarmed. 

She was conscious they were all staring at her 
with anxiety and alarm, but she thought of Jim 
and lifted her head higher. 

“ I wouldn’t let anyone tell you but myself,” 
she said. “ Dr. Hurley is coming to-morrow, 
father, to ask your consent to an engagement 
between us.” 

Mrs. Oliver turned pale and looked at her hus- 
band. He took one of Jessie’s limp hands. 

“I am a broad-minded man,” he said, “but I 


282 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


don’t like a mixed marriage for a daughter of 
mine. His people are not in our class, but that 
I could overlook much more easily. The lad is a 
gentleman, and will make an honourable career for 
himself. But for the religion I should say ‘ yes ’ 
willingly. Have you counted the cost, Jess? 
My daughter and your mother’s could scarcely 
fail to have deep religious convictions. How will 
it be when your dearest faiths are not shared 
by the human heart you have to lean upon all 
your life ? ” 

I have counted the cost,” answered Jessie. 

“You are too young!” cried Mrs. Oliver, 
breaking into the discussion. The poor lady was 
on the verge of tears. “ You are too young to 
judge for yourself in so serious a matter.” 

“ Darling mother,” said Jessie, “ oh, why is it 
that I must always hurt you ? But I shall not be 
too young. I am going to let him finish his time 
in India and the work he has set himself there. 
I shall have all those days and months and years 
in which to grow wise.” 

Mrs. Oliver breathed a little sigh of relief. 

“You are not vexed, father?” said Jessie. 
“ And you will not let mother be vexed with 
me ? ” 


“ SHALL /, WASTING IN DESPAIRT 283 

No, my dear,” answered her father. “ Why 
should we be vexed ? You have been straightfor- 
ward and honest with us, and we have no grounds 
for anger. If I have anyone to blame it is 
myself, for bringing the young fellow to the 
house.” 

“ And what will you say to him, father ? ” 

“ I shall tell him what I have said to you — that 
because of the religious difference I cannot ap- 
prove heartily. I wish I could. But if you feel 
the same when he returns, you will be old enough 
to make your final choice, and I should not feel 
justified in opposing you. Better have no formal 
engagement, my dear ; though I shall not try to 
prevent your writing to each other.” 

“ As you will, father, dear ; but it will make no 
difference,” said Jessie. 

Everything had been far easier than she had 
dared to hope. True, her mother and May had 
kissed her as though they were streaking her for 
the grave, but Jessie could bear that. Her heart 
went out in intense love to her father for ,his 
kindness. She felt it made no difference between 
them, and she thought fondly of how his love 
would strengthen her during those years she 
would have to wait for Jim. She resolved to 


284 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

study hard and keep her intellect bright, so that 
in days to come she might be a more fitting mate 
for the lover she felt was destined for great things. 
She thought of herself as his comrade and 
friend and helpmate, and tingled with pride at 
the thought. Why, with that wonderful bright- 
ness waiting at the end, the years would not be 
long passing ! Yesterday she had no such won- 
derful hope, and the years stretched flat and 
dreary, an unending, sterile plain before her. 
She grew light-hearted at she thought of the let- 
ters that would come, and the love that would, be 
growing through winter and summer, seed time 
and harvest. 

The next morning Jim Hurley came, and was 
closeted with her father. After a little while she 
was called down to the study. The two men^ 
each so dear to her, seemed exceedingly good 
friends. 

“ I have told Jim,” said her father, “ that your 
mother is not quite reconciled to these doings, so 
I won’t ask him to wait for lunch. She will come 
round in time, if you young people still persist in 
overriding all prudence. Jim understands, and, 
as he has only a short time, I am going to let 
him say ‘ good-bye.’ ” 


SHALL /, WASTING IN DESPAIRT 285 

‘^Oh, how good you are, father!” said Jessie 
gratefully, as he kissed her on the forehead, and 
then went out. 

The lovers had some very quiet and grave con- 
versation about their future, sitting there, holding 
each other’s hands. Whatever each felt, they 
kept very much to themselves ; but when time 
was up Jim Hurley kissed his newly betrothed 
with solemn tenderness on the hair and forehead 
and eyes. 

“ May God keep you, my dear ! ” each whis- 
pered to the other, and in a moment he was 
gone. 

When Mr. Oliver came back he found Jessie 
making a brave effort to keep back her tears. 
She succeeded at the price of a headache, and 
afterward was again her old gay self, with just 
something added of seriousness and responsibility. 

A little later she gained from her mother the 
permission to write once more to Nora. In this 
new shock to the poor lady’s susceptibilities, that 
other pair of culprits were quite lost sight of. 


U 


CHAPTER XVI. 


HUSBAND AND WIFE. 

In the pretty drawing-room of a Mayfair house 
Nora Hilliard was half-reclining on a sofa drawn 
near the fire. The streets were full of the Christ- 
mas fog outside, and, in the larger thoroughfares, 
of the Christmas gaiety also. People hurried 
along with many festive parcels ; the pavements 
of Regent Street and Westbourne Grove were im- 
passable ; and the tired attendants in the glitter- 
ing shops needed to be hundred-handed in order 
to serve the myriad customers. Nora would have 
dearly liked to be out in those delightful streets, 
but there were special reasons why she should re- 
main at home, and she looked enviably cosey in 
her pink, fur-trimmed tea gown and silk slippers, 
by the rosy fire on the hearth. She was bored, 
however; her novel had fallen to the floor, where 
Rags was sampling its contents, and she was 
listening eagerly for the sound of her husband’s 
feet on the stairs, running up joyfully as he al- 
ways did when coming back to her. 

286 


HUSBAND AND WIFE. 


287 


Ah ! ” she said at last, with a sigh of relief. “ I 
thought for the hundredth time that I heard a latch- 
key in the lock. Thank Heaven you are come ! ” 

“ Why, sweetheart,” laughed Hilliard, who had 
come in briskly, bringing a whiff of the fog, 
what a solemn thank-offering! Were you des- 
perately bored ? ” 

“ Desperately ! ” she said, looking up at him 
with shining eyes. I always am when you are 
away. And now come and display the results of 
your afternoon shopping.” 

Hilliard drew a chair by the sofa and deposited 
his stock of little packets. 

’Twas lucky you remained at home, sweet- 
heart,” he said. “ Such a hustling and jostling I 
went through in Bond Street before I could work 
my way to Le Roy’s 1 I believe all the women 
and children in London had turned out to press 
their noses against the shop windows ; and to 
step into the street was to put one’s self under 
the wheels of a hansom, for the roads were as 
congested as the pathways. The brilliance of the 
shops turned the fog golden, or traffic would have 
been dangerous.” 

How I wish I could be out in it ! But what 
have you brought me ? ” 


288 


THE WA V OF A MAID. 


He finished opening the first of the packets. 
She caught at the case it contained and eagerly 
pressed the spring. It flew open, disclosing a 
diamond-encrusted watch set in a bracelet. 

“ How lovely ! ’’ she said, with a deep sigh of 
rapture. 

“ The writing case for your Aunt Sylvia and 
Mary’s workbox are coming this evening. But 
here is the silver frame for that picture of you 
you meant to send your father. And here are 
one or two other pretty things.” 

They were little lace-pins of diamond and opal, 
diamond and sapphire, each in a tiny case. 

Nora looked at them wondering. 

“ But whom are those for?” she said. “You 
have given me so many brooches already. They 
are not for me? ” 

“ No, greedy one ! I thought you would like 
to send them to the Oliver girls,” he said half- 
apologetically. 

“ But they are angry with us still, dear. Mrs. 
Oliver will not like it. We should be intruding.” 

He looked at her with the air of one who has 
been keeping a secret. 

“ No, darling, forgive me for not telling you 
before. I have a letter from Jessie. It came this 


HUSBAND AND WIFE. 289 

morning before you had got up. And I kept it 
till I had bought these pretty things to surprise 
you. I know how your dear heart rejoices in 
making presents.” 

“ Oh, dear Jessie ! ” said Nora. ‘‘ How glad I 
am ! Go and fetch the letter straight, sir, and let 
me hear all the news.” 

“ Time enough, little woman,” said Hilliard 
easily. You haven’t thanked me for my brace- 
let, nor told me what you’ve been doing all day.” 

He leant down to her, and she kissed him and 
then stroked his hair tenderly. It was easy to see 
that this pair had not ceased to be lovers in be- 
coming husband and wife. 

“ Oh, my day was lazy as usual. But what 
have you been doing since you left me this morn- 
ing, dear boy?” 

“ Lunched with Trevelyan, and strolled with 
him to the club. Afterward had a game of 
billiards to warm us up — walked down Long Acre 
to see Spicer about the lining of your brougham, 
then did your shopping and home. Everyone is 
going into the country for Christmas, and the 
West End will be a howling wilderness.” 

“ Poor boy ! ” she said. Will it be a bore to 
stay in town ? ” 


290 the way of a maid. 

“ I have forgotten to be bored,” he said. My 
world is my wife. We shall have a cosey Christ- 
mas in here, you and I and Love. I am very 
glad we decided to stay, though. I couldn’t trust 
you to the rattle of trains now. Do you remem- 
ber last year, and my Christmas gift? ” 

“ I should think I did ! When are you going 
to give me that bracelet? You know it is mine.” 

I keep it to remind me what a little virago 
you can be. The wholesome fear keeps me in 
order.” 

“ Oh, by the way ! I have the funniest bit of 
news from home ! ” 

“ Not home, dearest. This is home,” he said 
reproachfully. 

“ Oh, I forget, darling. Of course, where you 
are is home. But look,” — she hunted among the 
cushions till she found a letter, — “ this is from 
Mary. She begins, ^ Honoured Miss Nora,’ and 
then hastily adds, ‘ I mane Mrs. Hilliard, ma’am.’ 
Well, Mary has made a choice among her multi- 
tudinous swains. You know how she fancied that 
the adult male peasant population of Coolevara 
was buzzing about her fortune and person like 
bees about a rose. Well, she’s chosen Tom Con- 
nor, father’s yard-man. He’s a miserable old 


HUSBAND AND WIDE. 


291 


cripple, and no one but father would keep him. 
I always knew Mary had a liking for him, and 
thought it was due to her pity, but it seems that 
her kindness involved more than that.” 

“ Doesn’t someone say that love is a passionate 
kindness?” said Hilliard. 

“ Very little passion in Mary’s case. Listen to 
this passage : 

“ ‘ There’s them that says I’ve picked up the 
crooked stick in Tom, but he’s maybe better than 
many a straight man. If he’s lost a leg and is 
blind of one eye it stands to rayson there’s less 
of him to be gettin’ into mischief. He won’t be 
off the minit my back’s turned to spend the lob 
on porther in Coolevara, an’ he’ll have no more 
than wan eye to spy out mischief with.’ ” 

Hilliard roared with enjoyment. 

“ I wonder what the swain would think if he 
^ heard Mary’s apology for his deficiencies.” 

“ He’d enjoy it,” said Nora. He looks at 
Mary with something of the humourous appreci- 
ation she bestows on the world at large. But 
that’s only Mary’s way. I believe she’s really 
fond of Tom and will make him a good wife. 
I’m selfishly glad she has chosen him, as it won’t 
involve her leaving my father, for Tom lives in a 


292 


THE WAY OF A MAW. 


cottage in the yard. It would be too bad if she, 
too, left the poor old dear.” 

“ We seem to have introduced the troublesome 
passion into Coolevara, my sweet.” 

“Yes,” assented Nora. “It’s very strange. 
Our Love might have flown away from us — he 
seems to have been kindling his torch by so 
many hearths in Coolevara. Marriages used to 
be very scarce there, and marriages for love even 
more so.” 

“ By the way, Jessie’s letter, too, has a hint of 
love in it,” said Hilliard, in a slightly hesitating 
way. 

“Jessie!” said his wife, fairly roused. “Oh, 
tell me about Jessie! Is there a lover at Cro- 
martin? But, no, you would have told me at 
once if there was anything so wonderful.” 

Hilliard turned away a little sharply. 

“ I will fetch the letter,” he said. 

When he had gone out of the room Nora got 
up from the couch and shook out all her pretty 
draperies. She was impatient for Jessie’s letter. 

“ Now, what does he mean,” she said to her- 
self, “ by not giving me her dear letter straight 
off. He really looked, as he went out of the 
room, as though he were going to bring me 


HUSBAND AND WIFE. 


293 


something unpleasant. As if there could be 
anything in dear old Jess’ letter I should not 
like.” 

Hilliard returned leisurely, and finding his wife 
standing up by the fire he slipped an arm round 
her waist. She rested her head against his 
shoulder and held out her hand for the letter. 

“ Wait, sweetheart,” he said. There is some 
news in it she thought would surprise you very 
much. That is why she wrote to me rather than 
to you, I fancy. Do you know they have been 
seeing a good deal of Dr. Hurley lately?” 

“ No,” she said, turning her wandering eyes 
upon him. “ No one has written to me about 
Jim; I mean Dr. Hurley.” 

Her face took a new expression. A swift 
alarm came into her eyes. 

“ Has anything happened to him ? ” she said, 
in a voice she tried to keep steady. 

“Nothing,” said Hilliard coldly. “He is 
quite well, and, so far as I know, quite happy. 
He has cause to be, for he and Jessie seem to 
have arrived at some sort of understanding. 
There is not a formal engagement, and he has 
returned to India, but Jessie seems to say it is 
an engagement all the same.” 


294 THE WAY OF A MAID. 

“No!" said Nora vehemently, withdrawing 
herself from his embrace. 

“Yes," said her husband shortly. “Here is 
the letter." 

Nora read it eagerly. Then she flung it from 
her to the furthest corner of the room. 

“ Men forget 'very easily," she said, with 
bitterness. 

“ You could not expect him to remember you, 
my dear," said her husband. “ And I wonder 
you wish him to." 

B«t, to his consternation, she suddenly burst 
into tears. In a moment he had forgotten his 
anger and was holding her to his breast. 

“ My dearest, my sweetest," he said, “ I should 
have remembered." 

He soothed her with inarticulate words of ten- 
derness, whispered against her hair, as a mother 
might whisper to a grieved child. Presently the 
sobbing ceased, and he sat down, still holding 
her in his arms. He put back her curls and 
mopped her eyes with his handkerchief. Then 
he put down his face against hers and they 
rested so. There was no sound in the room but 
the ticking of a little China clock in the corner 
and the snoring of the dog on the rug. 


HUSBAND AND WIFE, 


295 


After a time Nora whispered to him : 

“ Do you know, St. Edmund, I think you are 
the tenderest and most careful person in the 
whole world.” 

He lifted up his face and kissed her again. 

My rose, I can never be tender enough to 
you.” 

“ I could not bear a man who was not good to 
me,” she said. “ But yours is not just common 
goodness. You are my rest and shelter. When- 
ever I feel ill or depressed, if you only come to 
me you lift off all my burden. You understand 
everything.” 

‘‘ How glad I am, sweet, that you feel like 
that,” he answered ardently. “ Do you know, I 
thought a minute ago that you were fretting 
over your choice.” 

“You foolish boy!” she said, passing her 
finger down his cheek. 

“ Why did you cry, then, and frighten me?” 

She laughed this time. 

“ I suppose I didn’t like to think I could be 
forgotten so soon. When I get used to it I shall 
be glad. Jessie is ever so much better than I, 
and will help her husband in all his work and set 
herself to understand his subjects and sympa- 


296 the way of a maid. 

thise with him. He never really knew me, and, 
indeed, I didn’t know myself. I have grown 
complicated, perhaps, now. Love used to seem 
such a simple thing ; so ordered and regulated. 
I had no idea of what a masterful thing it could 
be till you came and swept me off my feet. 
When you came back that time I was nearly at 
the end of my will and self-respect. I think if 
you had not come I should have written to you, 
and implored you to answer me.” 

“ But I came, sweetheart.” 

“Yes, you came. And we are married eight 
months and I have not yet grown used to having 
you. I wonder if I shall ever take my happiness 
calmly. It is no wonder if I cry and am out of 
sorts sometimes, because I have such exaltations. 
I must have the reaction afterward.” 

“ Poor little woman, you have been going the 
pace too hard. I don’t mean in the way of 
dissipation, but in the way of multiplying sen- 
sations.” 

He lifted up her chin and looked at her. She 
had certainly altered from the little garden rose 
she had been when he found her. Her features 
were sharpened, her eyes were larger and more 
languorous; she had taken on an exotic look. 


HUSBAND AND WIFE. 297 

Ah, well,’' he sighed, “ presently you will be 
all right, and we will spend our spring in the 
country, and find our happiness growing restful. 
I don’t want my country rose to be anything else, 
though you are always more exquisite every day.” 

As she looked at him he smoothed the anxious 
lines from his face. 

“You are getting melancholy, St. Edmund,” 
she said. “You are always cheerful when you 
are with me, but I never hear you whistling about 
the house now as you used to. And I have sur- 
prised you once or twice with a line in your fore- 
head like those you had when I first knew you. 
They mustn’t come back.” 

She smoothed a place in his forehead with her 
finger-tip. 

“No, sweetheart,” he said. “I am always 
happy, wonderfully happy and blessed unless you 
fret me with your inexplicableness, as you did for 
a moment this evening.” 

“ Did I then ? ” she whispered childishly. “ I 
am so sorry. I didn’t make you jealous?” 

“ No, sweetheart,” he said gravely. “ With me 
love and jealousy cannot go together.” 

“ But I am jealous,” she murmured, “ often and 
often. Why, even when you are so good to me I 


298 the way of a maid. 

feel jealous, for I think you could onl^ have 
learned your tender ways from taking care of the 
woman you loved before you dreamed of me.” 

‘^Oh, hush, sweetheart! You have all my 
heart and must be content.” 

“ I don’t know whether you can give up the 
past so utterly,” she said. “ Nora Hilliard is a 
more madly happy woman than Nora Halloran 
ever dreamt of being in her wildest romances, yet 
Nora Hilliard often looks back with a curious 
longing to those old, unshadowed days when she 
was only an Irish farmer’s daughter.” 

That is not kind, dear,” he said. 

Just then a bell pealed through the house. 

“The dressing-bell, by Jove ! ” said the man, 
looking at his watch. “ I suppose you will not 
change, darling ? ” 

“ No, I am quite grand enough for our two 
selves, and very comfortable. Don’t be long, 
dear boy.” 

Alone in his dressing-room Hilliard leant for- 
ward and looked at his own face in the glass. 

“ She was right,” he said, “ the lines are coming 
back. It is very hard to deceive a woman, but at 
all hazards I must not let her know what a night- 
mare of anxiety oppresses me these days.” 


HUSBAND AND WIFE. 299 

felt it a relief to be unobserved, so that he 
might let the shadow of trouble come into his 
face, and the lines deepen if they would. When 
he had dressed he flung himself in the chair by 
his dressing-room fire for a breathing space. 

“ Manners says she is all right," he muttered, 
except for a constitutional delicacy. He’s a 
decent old boy, and understands and pities my 
terrors, though he must have known the like in 
scores of husbands. No, not the like — for few 
men happily can have felt like me." 

He stood up and shook himself, and nervously 
passed his handkerchief across his forehead. 

** Oh, my God," he said, take care of her, pull 
her through, and afterward teach me how to 
thank Thee ! " 

And then with a groan: “They talk of the 
curse of Eve, but the curse of Adam, if he loved 
his wife with a tenth part of my love, was more 
cruel." 

He kicked a coal into the grate, and then 
with a straightening of himself, as if he liter- 
ally pulled himself together, he went downstairs 
with a pathetic pretence of whistling a gay 
tune. 

“ You have been so very long," said his wife 


300 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 




when he came in, “ and I have been lonely. I 
don’t think you can love me at all, or you 
wouldn’t be so happy away from me.” 

He drew back her head and silenced her with 
a kiss. 


THE END. 





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